Source: Yunnan Net
Today, I want to take you to know about the vertebrate red horned owl.
Red Horned Owl
otus scops
Vertebrates, Ornithischia, Owl, Owl, Horned Owl. Also known as the mallet finch, common owl, night owl, is a national second-class protected animal, inhabiting the dense open wilderness of the trees, widely distributed in China. Photo taken on Gaoligong Mountain.
The Red Horned Owl is gray-brown or brownish-maroon in color, and this "camouflage suit" makes it easy to blend into its surroundings. The feathers on the wing areas are mostly dark brown , with brownish-white spots mixed with brownish-white spots from the top of the head to the back and from the wing coverts. The abdomen is reddish brown or greyish brown and the claws are grayish brown.
Many animals have different vision from humans, and it is difficult to distinguish similar colors, and the "camouflage" of the red-horned owl is almost close to the color of the trunk, so it is better to camouflage itself to ambush the prey.
Unlike the owl with "big waist and round waist" in people's impressions, although the red horned owl is also a small bird of prey, its body length is only about 20 centimeters, which is very small. However, "small men" have "big skills"! The red-horned owl's diet includes insects, rodents, birds, lizards and snakes. Moreover, these prey were hunted during the "dark and windy night of the moon".
If the earlier introduction of The Gunn's bamboo leaf green can perceive things at night through thermal imaging of the cheek socket, then the "night combat" ability of the red horned owl is more "advanced". Because compared to the approximate outline "seen" by thermal imaging, the red-horned owl can really see its prey clearly.
Studies have found that sensory cells in the animal retina are divided into two types: cone cells and cylindrical cells. The sensory cells of our human retina belong to the cone cell type, which is characterized by the need for a certain intensity of light stimulation to see objects clearly, and if the light becomes weaker, the visual perception ability will also decrease. In order to adapt to nocturnal life, the red horned owl has a cylindrical retina sensory cell, which is characterized by being able to see objects in extremely weak light such as moonlight and starlight.
To win the "night battle", it is not enough to have a retina that adapts to extremely weak light. Another of the Red Horned Owl's "night weapons" is its pupils. If you look closely, do you find that the eyes of the red-horned owl occupy a particularly large proportion of the face? When night comes, in order to see objects clearly, the pupils of the red horned owl can be enlarged a lot to facilitate the collection of more light into the retina.
So many "cheating tools" make the success rate of the red-horned owl greatly increase when preying at night.
Wang Bin, director of the Science Popularization and Education Unit of the Lushui Pipe Protection Branch of Gaoligongshan National Nature Reserve, has been fighting in the frontline of the nature reserve for 25 years and won the "Subaru Ecological Protection Award". He loves photography after work, and has signed a contract for the southwest mountainous area, and has won many honors such as the silver medal of the "60th Anniversary of China's Nature Reserve Undertaking" ecological photography competition. It is hoped that through publicity and video, more people will pay attention to Gaoligong Mountain and pay attention to ecological protection.