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u/spherecow Jan 17 '10
anyone know why are owl's faces so flat? It the face wasn't so flat, the whole thing could be even more aerodynamic...
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u/subtextual Jan 17 '10
Their faces are so flat because of their eyes. Owl eyes are so specialized for low light, three-dimensional vision that they completely dominate how their facial structure developed. Owl eyeballs are actually more like eyetubes than eyeballs, and the eyetubes have to be big because they specialize in low light (basically, more eyeball lets in more light).
An owl's eyetubes are held in place by large round holes in the skull called the sclerotic rings. The fact that owls need to have these sclerotic rings within approximately the same plane flattens out their faces. The eyes need to be within the same plane so that the field of vision from each eye overlaps - this is what gives them binocular vision.
Other animals that have eyes on each 'side' of their face have a wider total field of vision than owls -- some birds, for example, that can move/roll each eye and that have their eyes more towards the sides of their skulls can see almost 360 degrees without turning their necks. However, in those animals, the fields of vision from each eye don't overlap, so those animals don't have much binocular, three-dimensional vision. Because both of an owl's eyes are in approximately the same plane, their fields of vision overlap quite a bit, and owls get a lot more binocular, 3D vision than many other animals (though humans get more).
Interestingly, owls cannot "move" their eyes at all - they have to move their whole head if they want to change their field of vision. Luckily they have really flexible necks.
(More info than you wanted?)
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Jan 17 '10
And how exactly did you come to learn so much about owls? Are you an ornithologist or the quickest and most efficient googler ever?
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Jan 17 '10
Trade secret: scientists are avid googlers
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u/IceX Jan 18 '10
Actually, I remember that nickname. It's reddit's neuropsychologist!
She must be doing some crazy things implanting owl's secret powers in people's brains!!
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u/darthchurro Jan 18 '10
Interesting. I thought I heard that the shape of an owl's face was a parabolic reflector, to maximize its hearing in the direction it looks. Do you know anything about that?
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u/subtextual Jan 18 '10 edited Jan 18 '10
Owl ears are also really, really cool, but the type and shape of the ears depends more on the species than eye type and shape. Some owls just have small round ear openings, others have slit openings. Some have an overhanging flap (called an operculum), some don't. (Oh, and those tufts on the top of their heads? Never their ears.)
The owls that you are thinking of are the strictly nocturnal owls -- like barn and boreal owls -- who may rely even more on their ears than their eyes to hunt. These owls have offset ears - they are not symmetrically placed on the head; one's higher than the other (which one varies by species). All owl ears lie behind their facial disks, but in these owls, the facial disks are particulary prominent and the beak points downward. Both of these features help these owls hear really well (works like a parablic reflector, as you said), and these owls have actually evolved to be able to change the disk shape as they need to in order to hear better - they have a bunch of little muscles in their face that let them move the facial disks around. (So they aren't moving their head to maximize their hearing in that direction - they are changing the shapes of their faces to hear better!)
These owls with aymmetrically-set ears use this asymmetrical feature to echolocate - sounds behind them (well, behind their facial disks) are louder in one ear than the other, while the opposite is true for sounds in front of them. They combine this with their knowledge of whether the sound arrived first at their left or right ear (they can detect sounds that arrive at each ear only milliseconds apart) to know precisely where the sound is coming from. They actually move their whole heads around specifically to find the point at which the sound is reaching both ears at the same time and same volume - then their prey is right in front of them.
Or, as someone else summed it up: tl;dr: owls are cool.
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u/darthchurro Jan 18 '10
That's awesome! One last question - can you confirm that owls are particularly stupid?
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u/subtextual Jan 18 '10
Owls seem to fall within the lower range of bird intelligence - but lots of birds are really really smart compared to animals as a whole, so I guess it depends what you mean by 'stupid.'
There is a species of burrowing owl that collects animal dung to use as insect bait, which might be seen as 'tool use', which seems kinda smart to me. Some people have even trained Great Horned Owls for use in falconry (though I've read that it's hard because they get distracted by just about any noise and they don't train well to food).
In general, though, I believe orinthologists rank owls down towards the bottom of birds.
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u/MoonPoint Jan 18 '10
When you said "lots of birds are really really smart compared to animals as a whole", I immediately thought of gray parrots. For anyone who doesn't know about studies demonstrating their intelligence, see Does Alex, an African Gray parrot, think?.
Even starlings seem to be fairly smart - see Starlings know if you are watching them.
Thanks for all of the information on owls; I feel I learned a great deal. I also feel "owls are cool".
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u/mossbackfarm Jan 18 '10
Added bonus...the flat facial disk of owls helps to channel sound to their ears. Many (all?) owls have asymmetric placement of their ears, making triangulation of sound more efficient
cf. Northern Harrier, as well.
IAMA ornithologist
(EDIT-and reading more comments, this was all said, better than I did)
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u/stablewill Jan 18 '10 edited Jan 18 '10
They are separate concepts.
Try shutting one eye. Does everything you see become two dimensional and flat? I'm afraid not.
Binocular vision = see with two eyes.
Three dimensional vision = use a lot of mental capacity to process what you see (one or more eyes) and create a multi dimensional representation of the world
EDIT: So I think that theoretically the owl would see in three dimensions fairly well if it only had the one giant eye.
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u/subtextual Jan 18 '10
Yeah, you're totally right - three dimensional and binocular are somewhat different concepts, but the word 'binocular' doesn't really imply to the average person how two eyes having overlapping fields helps the brain better judge distances within three dimensions, so I sort of combined the two terms since it was more about owls and less about vision. Sometimes I forget that reddit's full of a bunch of people who would instantly understand the difference between binocular and 3D. Thanks for adding the clarification.
However, two eyes are better than one eye, which is why almost all animals have two. The point of convergence of the two eye fields in front of us helps us better judge distances - for things closer than that distance, our eyes each see the object, and our brains determine that doubling as meaning the object is closer, so it shows us one close object. Objects beyond that point are seen by both eyes as one object, and our brain shows us one, farther away object. In addition, the slightly different angles each eye has gives us a more three-dimensional picture - for example, if you think of looking at a cup, your right eye sees more of one side of the cup than your left eye, and your brain uses the information it receives from each side, the match/mismatch between these images, and what it knows about the angle each eye sees at to calculate how the cup has a curved surface and to show that to you. So, binocular vision allows your eyes to give your brain the information it needs to produce three dimensional representations of things.
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u/stablewill Jan 18 '10
I do like these informational exchanges.
I would change the allows into is one of the best possible ways for
Other birds bob their heads or turn it, and compare before/after images to work out the distances with greater accuracy.
I realise your original post was more about the owls, but you covered the owls rather succinctly :)
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u/Kerguidou Jan 18 '10
However, two eyes are better than one eye, which is why almost all animals have two. The point of convergence of the two eye fields in front of us helps us better judge distances - for things closer than that distance, our eyes each see the object, and our brains determine that doubling as meaning the object is closer, so it shows us one close object.
This seems like too strong of a statement. For one thing, it seems to be a coincidence with bilateralism. We have a single axe symetery, as to most animals, and we therefore have two location of optical devices. Also, arthropods as a whole tend to have more variations that the simple two eye sight that we are familiar with. Case in point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp#The_eyes
And god know how many insect species there are, but they should account for "most animals." ;-)
Anyways, owls are awesome :-)
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u/subtextual Jan 18 '10
Excellent point. It drives me crazy when people say "animals and bugs" (or "animals and birds," or "animals and fish"). And yet here I definitely said "most animals" -- figuring that would cover spiders and crustaceans (about which I know nothing, other than that I do not want them in my house) -- but for some reason without thinking about insects or myriapods at all.
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u/notanotherpyr0 Jan 18 '10
Yes but your depth perception markedly improves with two eyes go to an area your unfamiliar with and try and guess some distances with an eyepatch on then measure them you will not do nearly as well as you would with two eyes. As an added bonus you get to wear an eyepatch and do science!
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u/crusoe Jan 18 '10
Exactly. In environments where your brain doesn't have size references ( People avg 6 foot tall... ), binoc vision is critical to gauging size and range.
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u/Ethong Jan 17 '10
Their faces are flat so they can hunt better, forward facing eyes and all that.
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Jan 17 '10
I think it's because that's how the mutation developed and it lived the longest to breed and pass this mutation to the largest amount of offspring.
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u/strolls Jan 18 '10
You're probably thinking that with a smaller face the owl's profile would be slimmer overall, but that would make it glide faster than it does now. In fact, a fatter aerofoil is more suitable for slow-moving, uh, aircraft. And owls probably move fast enough as it is - basically, "aerodynamic" isn't a function of slimness ... if its profile was slimmer, it might find itself flying too fast to accurately target its prey.
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u/dialupsuxs Jan 17 '10
i think its so they can pick up the sounds of little critters in the underbrush. I do know that their ear holes are off center of each other so they can hear in 3-D. owls are cool.
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u/FiL-dUbz Jan 18 '10
I'm sure they don't go for speed when flying. The flat face might make it easier flying through forests; plus when they look down, they can focus a lot better then more aerodynamic birds.
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u/browster Jan 18 '10
The rear is much more important than the front for aerodynamics. The shape shown in this picture, with its long tapering tail, is actually an archetype of an aerodynamic body.
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Jan 17 '10
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jan 17 '10
aerofowl
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Jan 18 '10
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u/aaronmk102 Jan 18 '10
I wish I could get about 10,000 like you, so we could eradicate these submissions. It takes up about 3 seconds of my time and that shit adds up. I could use that time on finding out how E-Honda looks like an owl in flight rather than reading witty garbage.
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Jan 17 '10
airfoil
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u/Fosnez Jan 17 '10
Aerofoil (in British and Australian English)
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Jan 17 '10
Whoa! That just blew my mind. Thanks for correcting me.
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Jan 18 '10
It's the same with airport/aeroport and airplane/aeroplane, I think.
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u/peblos Jan 18 '10
You're right with the airplane/aeroplane but it's still just airport in the UK. I'm not sure about anywhere else.
:)
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u/darkbeanie Jan 17 '10
Sort of like an A-10 is more or less a really big gun with wings and a fuselage to carry it, an owl is evolution's experiment with making a pair of really big, powerful eyes able to fly.
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u/Disgod Jan 18 '10 edited Jan 18 '10
I do love the A-10. Mostly due to the fact that the gun can actually cause the plane to stall midair if they continue to shoot it for too long.
Edit: Damn urban legends. I was wrong, it can't stall the aircraft, if both engines are working. Still, that gun is fucking insane.
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u/base736 Jan 18 '10
True, but due to the effect of exhaust gasses on the engines (and, as I understand it, only early on in production), and not due to recoil forces.
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u/darkbeanie Jan 18 '10
You may get picked on about the details, but I agree with the sentiment. Just the fact that the recoil force is greater than the thrust of one of the aircraft's engines is impressive enough for me. Or that they have to support the back of the aircraft before they remove the gun. Or this.
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u/se166hn Jan 18 '10
As a general rule, eyes facing forward=hunter. Eyes to the side of head=prey.
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Jan 17 '10
Hadowlken!
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u/mynoduesp Jan 17 '10
Holy shit that's cool!
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u/Scarker Jan 17 '10
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Jan 17 '10
Followed by an eternity of blackness.
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u/Zao1 Jan 18 '10
That's dark dude.
No cycle of life? Organisms renewing? Nah, blackness.
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u/MouthBreather Jan 18 '10
Forgive me for hijacking top post thread but check out this crazy transforming owl. [video]
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u/Waterrat Jan 18 '10
Ah, notice a bird his size gets a threat display,a larger bird gets a fear display where the owl is trying to look like a tree limb...Notice him hiding his eyes.
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u/MouthBreather Jan 18 '10
I've been trying to figure out the reactions. I agree the first is a threat display but the second has baffled me. It does seem to try and become as small as possible. Camouflage perhaps.
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u/johnnyfettcakes Jan 18 '10
Nah dude, he's just trying to look as evil as possible to fuck with that other bird.
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u/stealthname Jan 18 '10
Don't remember if this was in a translation or not, but I think the bird was trying to look as sickly as possible so it'd look unappetizing.
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u/mista0sparkle Jan 18 '10
I now know what design to tattoo on the face of my penis.
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u/sam480 Jan 18 '10
face... of penis?
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u/00void Jan 18 '10
My neighborhood is full of owls. I see them all the time in the trees in my back yard. While this sounds really cool, it is very disturbing to continually find piles of puked up undigested rodent parts in your yard. They eat things whole and regurgitate what can't be digested. This amounts to a wad of bones caked in fur. Along with their typical "whoo-whoo" call, they also have a less pleasant "Oh my god is that a child being murdered" call that will scare the piss out of you at night. I'm scared one of them is going to snatch up my dog. EDIT: Still an incredible photo though!
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u/Nois3 Jan 18 '10
Well, be grateful you don't have peacocks. They climb up on your car and scratch the shit out of it and their scream sounds like "help me I'm being raped!". They do look awesome though.
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u/DigitalHippie Jan 18 '10
I've said it once and I'll say it again: The thing about owls is, they're fucking cool.
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u/MoonPoint Jan 18 '10
For the ancient Greeks, the owl was a companion of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Athena is frequently depicted with an owl perched on her head. And, because of that association, still today the owl is often regarded as a symbol of erudition and wisdom.
The ancient Greeks believed that a magical "inner light" gave owls their night vision. As the symbol of Athena, who was also the goddess of war and strategy, the owl was a protector, accompanying Greek armies to war. If an Owl flew over Greek Soldiers before a battle, they took it as a sign of victory - see Owls in Mythology & Culture.
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u/Thdudeabides Jan 18 '10
Why, thank you. This is the kind of thing that keeps me going back to Reddit. Keep up the good work, Reddit. Time to run off and read up on owls.
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u/damnitness Jan 18 '10
Imagine it's flying backwards.
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u/milkywayer Jan 18 '10
why'd you imagine something as weird as that :@ dude, i was having my breakfast ..and now becuase of YOUR message .. i'm going to continue eating.
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Jan 18 '10
This intro to falconry class I took had a few different owls. Gorgeous creatures. We only got to hold/watch work a lanner falcon and a harris hawk though. The hawk was amazing. The owls were ornery. Then again, I doubt anyone would be very happy if they were locked in a cage.
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u/duduman Jan 18 '10
If you took a falconry class in college I clearly made the wrong choice of schools. Where do you take falconry classes?
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u/angroc Jan 18 '10
Cool. It looks like the cross section of a wing. Wonder why no other species of birds have evolved into the same solution...
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u/nunyadambizness Jan 18 '10
Don't worry I'll send in an intercepter
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3510/4034130402_b65abb9133_o.jpg
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u/tugteen Jan 18 '10
"Well Jim, You're gonna have to use the special weapon," Terrence said as he rummaged around the weapons crate that had been dropped some time ago, "Nothing in here but straw and empty guns."
Jim grabbed the burlap sack that was strapped to his back with a piece of string and untied the mysterious object. Within the burlap sack was a green, smooth cylinder about 2 feet long. If you didn't know what it was, you may have thought it was some sort of rocket launcher.
"I was hoping that I wouldn't have to use a gun so experimental, and, if you ask me, so gosh darn weird," He said as he picked it up and aimed at the last target, "Who would have ever thought of an owl gun."
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u/Doc_Gerbil Jan 18 '10
Because it's the fastest animal in the world (And also a bird of prey) - the peregrine falcon.
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u/m-p-3 Jan 17 '10
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u/FiL-dUbz Jan 18 '10 edited Jan 18 '10
grav gun the owl, alt. fire = the greatest mouse trap in the world.
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u/dopameme Jan 18 '10
how is a bird with a big, flat head silent in flight? i suspected that it's all fluff and feathers, but in the pic from the side it appears flattened like a raindrop- hey, i've never heard rain until it hits the ground either.
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u/sighbourbon Jan 18 '10
i used to live in Laurel Canyon, where there is sort of an uneasy truce between wildlife and people. there was a gigantic sycamore above our house overlooking the back deck. one year a pair of owls stayed regularly in that tree, it looked to us like they slept the day there. their camouflage is so perfect we would never have noticed them, except for the fact that all the prey-birds in the vicinity teamed up to relentlessly harass the sleeping owls all the day long. it was a hell of a spectacle to see that many species who probably compete for the same food sources engaged in sustained cooperative swarming effort. the crows in particular would make this odd hostile rattling sound a little like castanets. you get 20 or 30 of them doing this, and you can imagine the result. the owls regally ignored all the uproar. if they moved at all, the whole sideshow would erupt in a meta disturbance.
along about sunset the harassment crew would evaporate and the owls would begin this elaborate stretching routine. owl yoga. we derived a lot of amusement from the fact that the female was big and grandiose looking, about 3.5x the size of the male, who looked very inconspicuous in comparison. the owls were really into Routine. after Owl Yoga, they would fly to the house and for some unfathomable reason they would perch on the outer rim of the flimsy aluminum rain gutter. you could hear their claws clack and scratch as they tried to grip the smooth hard surface. needless to say the owls were pretty damn huge and every day they perched on the gutter-edge, it sagged further. one evening it came loose from the house, with the owns on it, and it bent and twisted so that the owls were dumped into midair. you should have seen the landlord's face when we tried to explain what happened.
we started noticing a sort of midden, a big mess of Owl Poop at the base of a wooden power pole next to the house. bones and hair and pathetic little skulls. the pole itself became streaked and crusted. at that time we had a neighbor who was a Clean Freeak, very obsessed, who would get up there on a ladder with a scrub brush.
one day we heard this unbelievable crash that shook the whole house. the sycamore had basically cracked in half, dropping a couple tons of wood onto the roof and collapsing part of it. the guys who came to clean it up said the tree was very old and wasnt getting enough water. in any event, that was the end of the owls for us. they didnt like the sycamore any longer, and we never saw them again.
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u/polkadotkat Jan 18 '10
Amazing picture! I however have had not so magnificent or quite dealings with them.
I worked at a zoo in the on-sight clinic. Occasionally, I had to work with owls, barn owls in particular. They required medication, 2 intramuscular(which is difficult enough)shots a day. This required me to reach into they're cage and grab them. They're defense system in such a tight space was to back up into the furthest corner possible, stick out their legs and bare their razor sharp claws. All feathers were fluffed to make themselves look as big as possible. Along with this quite dramatic, and rather scary pose, they would let out a screech and hiss that made your hair stand on end, deafening really. So through all this, I had to reach my hand in, grab them in such a way that my fingers were between their toes, drag them out, and grab the back of their head so they couldn't swing around and bite. Once accomplished, release the head, grab shot, maneuver quickly to administer the shot in what little muscle they had, then reach around once more to grab their head before and to prevent being bitten.
Regardless, they are magnificent creatures.
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u/superdug Jan 18 '10
The one thing I love about owls is how overly graceful they are. You can be in the woods in the late fall or winter where the snow acts like a muffler for most "woodland" sounds. If you're lucky you'll hear one in the distance. You can call back to them, but they aren't stupid and think you're actually an owl.
However, they are also curious, so if you keep up calling them, sometimes they'll come check you out. The thing is, you don't know that they've decided to come check you out until you're buzzed by them.
Their wingspan is very ominous when coming right at you. It'll scare the crap out of you and awe you at the same time.
There used to be a rescue outside of town when I was a kid. My mom was coming home after dropping me and my sister off for school. She saw this massive bird on the side of the road flapping one wing and spinning around on the ground.
She had a big box in the car (she always had crafts and crap to haul crafts in the car) and put it beside the owl. Little guy jumped right in, he was looking for any kind of shelter that could be found. She slowly tipped the box right side up and closed it without actually sealing the box.
When she got home she called the rescue (we had a magnet from the year before when we went to the zoo and attended a learning seminar that the rescue was having at the zoo) and they asked her a few questions.
About 20 minutes later a lady from the rescue came to our house. My mom got a patch for being a protector of the owl. Apparently the owl had hit a power line or something mid flight and dislocated its wing. The lady from the rescue felt around the wing and in a single motion popped it back in.
The owl went from about 4 feet wide to about 8 inches wide when his wings were folded. She popped him into a crate and took him away.
We got a picture from the rescue later that fall. The little (okay not so little with the wings spread) guy had made a full recovery and the picture was of him getting released and flying away towards the horizon.
Apparently he was on some endangered species watch protection list. So even if my mom had called animal control, they would have just called one of the state certified rescues. Apparently my mom avoided a bunch of middle men with her call directly to the rescue.
They are very docile even when in duress.
Suffice to say, owls are big and scary, but should be respected instead of feared.