It seems magpies do not deserve their bad reputation as the thieves of the animal kingdom.
Their love of hoarding shiny objects is so famous it is even recorded in the English dictionary. But according to scientists it simply isn't true.
On the contrary Toni Shepherd, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, said studies showed magpies treated shiny objects with the same fear of new objects as other birds.
Magpies are not the only species who are the subject of long-standing, and sometimes unflattering, animal myths. Here are some others:
Camels store water in their humps to survive in the desert
A camel really can survive for seven days without water, but not because they have their own personal reservoir in their hump.
They actually avoid dehydration thanks to their oval shaped red blood cells which continue to flow even when they are low on water, unlike the standard circular cells most animals have, and because the camel's kidneys have an exceptional ability to save water.
A camel's hump is actually a huge mound of fat that contains as much energy as three weeks food, which helps to keep the camel going in the desert where meals are often few and far between.
Swans are monogamous
Unfortunately the idea that swans mate for life is a feathery fiction. In fact these beautiful birds are just as prone to the ugly side of relationships as other species, including infidelity and divorce.
A genetic experiment showed one in six cygnets is actually illegitimate, while other studies revealed swans were more surreptitious about mating with another bird behind their partner's back.
And swans aren't the only animals who are the subjects of a monogamous myths. Phoebe from Friends wrongly claimed lobsters mate for life; in reality they are much more shellfish lovers.
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they are scared
If an ostrich really was bird brained enough to bury its head in the sand when it felt threatened it wouldn't be able to breathe and would be easy prey for a hungry predator.
This myth is most likely the result of an optical illusion. Ostriches dig holes in the dirt to use as nests and several times each day the mother will put her into the hole to turn the eggs – making it look like she is burying her head in the sand.
That is compounded by the fact that ostriches have small heads despite being the world's largest living birds. Glinda Cunnigham, from the American Ostrich Association, says: “If you see them picking at the ground from a distance, it may look like their heads are buried beneath the surface.”
Pigs are dirty
This myth may well be perpetuated by the pungent aroma of a pig sty, but the truth is pigs are no more dirty than any other animal.
They will designate one area of their enclosure as a toilet, then sleep, play and eat in the other areas. Unlike dogs, they do this natural without any training.
And pigs only wallow in mud because they do not sweat like most other animals, so they need to find another way to cool off. The mud absorbs the heat from the big and transfers it to the atmosphere, as well as keeping horrible bugs at bay.
Goldfish only have a three second memory
There is something so fishy about this myth it could have been cooked up to sooth the consciences of pet owners who keep their goldfish is a glass bowl little bigger than a jam jar.
In reality a goldfish has a memory that lasts more than three months, not three seconds. Scientists at the Israeli Institute of Technology spent a month training young fish to associate a particular sound with feeding time, then released them into the wild.
They found the fish still responded to the sound five months later, demonstrating that they clearly remembered both the noise and the fact it represented dinner time.
Lemmings commit suicide by running off cliffs
You don't need to be a genius to smell a rat in this rodent-related myth. It can be traced back to a specific source – an Academy Award winning documentary called White Wilderness released by Disney in 1958, which turned out to be as fictional as their animated adventures.
The documentary apparently showed a herd of lemmings dashing over a cliff to their deaths, but it later emerged the footage had been faked.
The myth was perpetuated by huge variations in lemming populations, but it later emerged that these were actually caused by massive migrations that occur when a herd becomes unsustainable in a particular area. When lemmings do actually dash off cliffs it is invariably to dive into a river below to swim off in search of a new area to settle.
Sheep are stupid and just follow the flock
Far from having wool between their ears, sheep are actually extremely intelligent animals who are capable of solving problems.
In fact tests carried out by the University of Cambridge, who studied whether sheep could recognise which coloured buckets held their food, showed sheep had learning skills that were better than rodents and similar to humans and monkeys.
Sheep can also recognise and remember the faces of at least 50 individual sheep for more than two years, display different facial expressions for a range of emotions and are able to self-medicate by choose which plants to eat to cure them when they are ill.
Albatrosses sleep while flying
These mighty sea birds are famed for their long distance flights, often covering thousands of miles of open sea before returning to land.
They can even stay aloft without any effort thanks to their unique wing joints, which led some scientists to speculate that they slept in the air.
However, this transpired to be a flight of fancy and Dr Niels Rattenborg, from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology observed that most tracking studies found that albatrosses stopped and floated on the water for several hours at night so they could take a rest.
Sloths sleep more than any other animal
Despite their reputation, sloths are not the biggest snoozers in the animal kingdom. A study showed these slow moving mammals sleep for around nine to 10 hours each day.
Yet Koalas (which are marsupials, not bears – another common myth) kip for 14.5 hours per day, while brown bats get around 20 hours of shut eye and are awake for just four hours per night.
At the other end of the spectrum are the grazing giants like giraffes and elephants that need need just three to four hours of sleep each night.
Dogs can only see in black and white
In reality our canine chums can see in colour, just not as vividly as we can. Dogs only have two 'cones' in their eyes to detect colour, whereas humans have three.
That means that dogs see on a blue and yellow scale and are effectively colour-blind when it comes to trying to spot the difference between red and green. However, dogs do have better night vision than humans.