The owl is a bird of prey that is widely distributed around the world except Antarctica, and can be seen in the forests of many regions. With their excellent night vision and silent flying skills, they are known as "night hunters".
Because of their highly similar faces to cats and their main diet, all birds of prey in the order Owl are collectively referred to as owls. Because of the differences between Chinese and Western cultures, the meaning of owls in different countries is also different.
There is a saying in the traditional culture of our country: night owls enter the house without doing anything. Many times owls and crows are referred to as mourning birds, and it is believed that the presence of owls near homes may be ominous; in many Western countries, owls are considered to be a symbol of wisdom.
owl
In fact, many people do not know that the owl that looks cute and cute on the outside is actually the best of the three types of birds of prey. The tripod family of raptors is divided into owls, hawks, and falcons, and the owl owls are one of the most important types of birds of prey.
Owls are indeed a group of birds of prey, they are calm and calm, athletic and fierce, when night comes, owls can even prey on eagles, five years ago biologists through the night vision monitoring system observed an eagle owl attack and snatched away the red-tailed owls.
Eagle owl
Eagle owls prey on red-tailed owls
The largest size of the owl in the owl order is the eagle owl, the larger individual eagle owl weighs more than 10 pounds, the body length of about 700mm, coupled with their silent flight skills and night vision ability, catching medium-sized eagles at night is an easy thing for the eagle owl.
Owls have a more varied diet, with birds, rodents, frogs or smaller animals all on top of their diets, such as the largest eagle owl or even feeding on the long-eared owl of its kind.
Owl claws versus eagle claws
Eagle owl claws
Owls generally choose to settle in tree holes and have children. There are also many people who are curious about what is in the owl's nest, so what exactly is in the owl's home?
Owls as birds of prey are more than enough to deal with small beasts, but they are helpless when they have bugs in their nests, and clever owls hire an animal to act as a cleaner to help deworm them.
After the owl hatches the chicks, the female owls often feed the chicks in the nest, so there will be some prey residue left in the nest, so that the nest will often produce some maggots and parasites.
Owls can't clean up the bugs themselves, so they bring in a snake called the blind snake from elsewhere to help clean and remove the bugs.
Blind snake
A blind snake that is a cleaner in an owl's home can clean maggots and other parasites from tree holes and keep them clean and hygienic in their nests. The blind snake is a very small non-venomous snake the size of an earthworm.
It is covered with red and black scales, often inhabits the cave, feeding on various bugs and ants, because they are in the hole all year round, so the eyes gradually degenerate, and are not aggressive, and when angry, they only poke each other with their tails.
It seems that the owl really learned to use it, and for the sake of cleanliness in the nest, he dug a blind snake out of the hole to help.
Blind snakes feed
The owl's strange behavior is not only this one; an animal photographer named Wolff who lived in Florida seven years ago is a bird lover who often builds wooden nests in the forest near his home to help and observe nearby birds.
That year, he found an American horned owl entering the nest, and after a few days of observation, he found that the horned owl had actually settled here. Wolfe was very excited, and at night, when the horned owl came out of the nest to hunt for food, he quickly raised his camera to shoot, and in the panic he found that there was indeed a furry little guy in the nest, and it turned out that the horned owl was here as a mother.
But after some days, a surprising scene appeared, and the horned owl and its baby finally appeared. The horned owl hatched a wild duck in its nest.
Horned Owl Mother with Baby Duck
You must know that the ferocious horned owl can hunt wild ducks, but the scene in front of you is real, the horned owl does hatch the wild duck eggs, and plays the mother of the baby duck. This horned owl not only accompanies its baby duck every day, but also catches bugs for it to eat every day.
Wolff fears that the horned owl will harm the duck, so he prepares to intervene to rescue the baby duck. But before he could do anything, the little duck jumped out of the tree hole and swam into the nearby river while the horned owl mother was resting.
I think it should be that before the horned owl came, the wild duck preconceived and laid a duck egg in the nest, which was done to increase the probability of survival of the baby duck, so as to carry out scattered hatching, which is also the behavior of other birds. As for why the horned owl hatches duck eggs, it now seems to be a mysterious operation, perhaps the instinct of the horned owl.
Baby ducks
Owls spit on cocoons
In fact, the most amazing thing about the owl is its silent flight ability, after tens of millions of years of evolution, the owl has a unique flying ability, when it flies in the air, basically no sound at all.
Coupled with excellent night vision ability, the owl is invincible in the night sky, and the name of the night hunter is truly deserved. Owls can stabilize flight noise in the low frequency range of about 1500 Hz.
Ordinary small rodents have a sensitive sense of hearing and can only feel the sound of more than 2,000 hertz, so these animals cannot hear the sound of owls flying.
The owls have a distinctive body structure, which gives them the ability to fly silently. The general bird feathers are relatively neat and rounded at the edges and clearly structured, while the extension of the owl wing feathers is like serrations, and the feathers are much softer, and when air circulates near the wings, these feathers can be deformed with the flow of air, thereby reducing noise.
Unlike other birds, the skin on the owl is very rough and uneven, and a large number of hair follicle-like structures form a biological sound insulation structure, which is very similar to the sound insulation panels in the decorative materials, which plays a noise reduction effect.
This is similar to the reason why the outdoors are particularly quiet when it snows in winter, because of the structure of the snowflakes, many different small holes appear in the thick snow pile, which can absorb the noise of the outside world, and the owl's skin and the principle of snow sound absorption are similar.
Biologists have also found that the skin between the owl's belly and legs produces a class of cavity structures. There are very pronounced cavities between the cortex and the subcutaneous tissue. This type of structure can also produce a resonant sound absorption effect.
The owl is indeed a magical animal, with silent flight, night vision, excellent predatory skills in the birds of prey on their own portal, it is really impressive. The picture comes from the network intrusion link must be deleted.