Ancient Egyptians would make ibises into mummies and offer them to the god Thoth, whom they drew and carved with the head of an ibis. Egyptologists have found many thousands of ibis mummies in tombs. In 2019, scientists looked at the DNA from the ibis mummies and from living ibises around Africa and came to believe that the ibises that were made into mummies were not caught in the wild. Instead, ancient Egyptians fed the ibises in large lakes near their temples and caught them when they wanted them.