Can owls really predict death? As the saying goes, "night owls enter the house, nothing comes", the folk call owls "night owls", as long as night owls come to the vicinity of the house, it means that someone in this family is going to die.
This starts with the habits of owls.
The owl is a collective name for a class of birds of prey that number more than 130 species, officially called the owl (xiāo).
From the word "owl", it can be seen that the owl is a bird that can call a lot. Their sound is very characteristic and if you have heard it, it is difficult to forget.
The owl's call is long and poignant, and the rhythm sounds like a person laughing. There is also a saying in this regard, called "not afraid of night owls calling, afraid of night owls laughing", which also means that owls are unlucky.
Owls are natural enemies of rats, and mice are attracted to food and have always liked to live with humans, and owls will approach places where humans live for food.
In ancient times, the night was very quiet, and after dark, the rats came out of the holes, and the owls began to hunt. Sometimes people hear the "laughter" of owls in the vicinity in the quiet of the night, and the creepy and poignant sound will make a very deep impression.
If someone had died the next day, the ancients would have associated this inauspicious owl laughter they had heard the night before.
Over time, this bizarre thing spread more, and people said that the owl was a "mourning bird".
However, there is another explanation for the owl's ability to mourn. It is said that when human beings are close to death, the body will emit a decaying smell.
This smell is usually not noticed by humans, but because owls have a very sensitive sense of smell, this rotten smell that indicates death will attract them to come and wait to eat carrion, so the appearance of owls will represent death.
This statement sounds very scientific and is now widely circulated, but in fact, two things are not quite true.
First, owls do not eat carrion, only live food they hunt. Their diet is mainly rats, voles, and other small animals and bugs.
Usually, carnivores eat some carrion in order to fill their stomachs, but as long as they can hunt fresh food, they are not willing to scavenge. One is that it is not delicious, and the other is because if it is not a long-term scavenger animal, it is easy to get sick after eating carrion.
Compared to other species of birds of prey, owls have a high hunting success rate. They have a trick that the feathers on their bodies look different from other birds of prey, so that they can fly without making a sound, and their prey will rarely detect their attacks, and even eagles that are also birds of prey will be preyed on by them.
Since they rarely go hungry, there is no need for owls to eat carrion, so they do not stay with dying people like vultures.
The second reason is that owls are not actually sensitive to smell before human death.
Think about it, do carnivores, known for their keen sense of smell, live on the ground? Felines, canines, and even snakes are indispensable to smell when looking for prey.
And birds of prey are flying in the sky in search of prey, such a distance, no matter how you think about it, the sense of smell will hardly come in handy.
Birds of prey that fly very high, such as eagles, basically rely on strong eyesight and can see prey from several kilometers away. And owls rarely fly so high and spend most of their time in the woods, so in addition to their eyesight, they also rely on hearing to find prey.
Many species of owls will have two long tufts of feathers on their heads, and the function of these two ear feathers is to close the sound like the pinnae of other animals.
Studies have found that the auditory nerves in the owls' ears are very developed, so they can stand on trees and hear the sound of mice moving in the burrow, and accurately lock on to prey.
It is worth mentioning that because the ear feathers of owls resemble cat ears, and the big eyes on the round face are similar to cats, the name owl is born.
Therefore, the real owl is not the legendary "mourning bird", let alone bring bad luck. On the contrary, because they are good at preying on mice that harm crops, they can be called "food protectors".
#Headline Creation Challenge##Owl##农村有句俗语: "The owl calls the ghost coming", do you know what this is all about##Night owl##Raptor##鸮 #
