In this extract from JENNIFER ACKERMAN‘s What An Owl Knows she tells us a bit about why this night-time predator is so fascinating to humans.
What is it about owls that so enthralls us? They appear in the Chauvet Cave paintings of France dating to 30 000 years ago and in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egyptians, in Greek mythology and among the deities of the Ainu people of Japan, in the prints and etchings of Picasso and as couriers in the Harry Potter stories, shuttling between the realm of matter‑of‑fact Muggles and the magical. They inhabit our languages and are embedded in our sayings. When we’re cranky, stubborn, uncooperative, we are ‘owly’. If we stay up late or are active at night, we’re ‘night owls’. If we’re aged and sage, we’re ‘wise old owls’.
In some places, owls vie with penguins for popularity. In others, they’re vilified as demon spirits. Owls have this kind of duality. They’re tender and deadly, cute and brutal, ferocious and funny, sometimes even playing the mischievous clown, stealing camera equipment or snatching hats. We see something deeply familiar in them, with their round heads and big eyes, and at the same time, an intimation of a whole other kind of existence, the dark side of the one we inhabit. Most owls are nocturnal creatures that move about unseen, revealed only by their weird night hoots and cries. Their flight is velvety quiet, and their hunting skills, often deployed in pitch black, inspire awe.
In many cultures, owls are deemed half bird, half spirit, crossovers between the real and the ethereal, considered by turns symbols of knowledge and wisdom on the one hand, and bearers of bad luck and illness, even death, hat is it about owls that so enthralls us? They appear in the Chauvet Cave paintings of France dating to 30 000 years ago and in the hieroglyphics of ancient Egyptians, in Greek mythology and among the deities of the Ainu people of Japan, in the prints and etchings of Picasso and as couriers in the Harry Potter stories, shuttling between the realm of matter‑of‑fact Muggles and the magical. They inhabit our languages and are embedded in our sayings. When we’re cranky, stubborn, uncooperative, we are ‘owly’. If we stay up late or are active at night, we’re ‘night owls’. If we’re aged and sage, we’re ‘wise old owls’. In some places, owls vie with penguins for popularity. In others, they’re vilified as demon spirits.
Owls have this kind of duality. They’re tender and deadly, cute and brutal, ferocious and funny, sometimes even playing the mischievous clown, stealing camera equipment or snatching hats. We see something deeply familiar in them, with their round heads and big eyes, and at the same time, an intimation of a whole other kind of existence, the dark side of the one we inhabit. Most owls are nocturnal creatures that move about unseen, revealed only by their weird night hoots and cries. Their flight is velvety quiet, and their hunting skills, often deployed in pitch black, inspire awe. In many cultures, owls are deemed half bird, half spirit, crossovers between the real and the ethereal, considered by turns symbols of knowledge and wisdom on the one hand, and bearers of bad luck and illness, even death, on the other. They’re often viewed as prophets or messengers. The Greeks believed that an owl flying over a battlefield predicted victory. In the early folklore of India, owls crop up as symbols of wisdom and prophecy. So, too, among the Navajo. The Navajo myth of Nayenezgani, the creator, reminds people that they must listen to the voice of the prophet owl if they want to know their future. The Aztecs considered owls a symbol of the underworld, and the Maya, as messengers of Xibalba, the ‘place of fright’. In Julius Caesar, Casca is terrified when an owl appears by day as an omen of imminent death: ‘The bird of night did sit, / Even at noonday upon the marketplace, / Hooting and shrieking.’
Owls exist on every continent except Antarctica and in every form in the human imagination. Yet for all this ubiquity and interest, scientists have only lately begun to puzzle out the birds in deep detail. Owls are much more difficult to find and study than other birds. They are cryptic and camouflaged, secretive and active at a time when access to field sites is challenging. But lately researchers have harnessed an array of powerful strategies and tools to study them and unpack their mysteries.
What an Owl Knows explores what new science has discovered about these enigmatic birds – their remarkable anatomy, biology, and behaviour and the hunting skills, stealth, and sensory prowess that distinguish them from nearly all other birds. It looks at how researchers have pulled back the curtain on how owls communicate, court, and mate, how they raise their young, whether they act more from instinct or from learning, why they move from place to place or stay put to weather the seasons, and what they have to tell us about their nature – and our own. It explores new insights gleaned from studying owls in the wild and also in captivity, birds kept ‘in the hand,’ most often because they’ve been injured. Specialists who live and work with owls in intimate partner relationships are learning things one can learn only up close, one on one with an owl. They’re advancing the science of caring for these birds, and in return, the owls they heal are helping to educate the public and revealing some of the deepest mysteries about their communication, their individuality and personality, their emotions and intelligence.
Some owls cache or hoard their prey in special larders. Some decorate their nests.
In analysing the apparently ‘simple’ hoots and calls of owls, for instance, researchers have found that their vocalizations follow complex rules that allow the birds to express not only their needs and desires but highly specific information about their individual identity, and their sex, size, weight, and state of mind. Some owls sing duets. Others duel with their voices. Owls can recognise one another by voice alone. Their faces are expressive, too. They may seem to wear the same bland meditative visage, imperturbable as the moon, but their appearance can change along with their feelings – a fascinating window on their minds, if you know how to read it.
Some owls migrate but not like other birds, and not in predictable patterns. Some owls cache or hoard their prey in special larders. Some decorate their nests. Burrowing Owls live in underground burrows, sometimes alongside prairie dogs, and when threatened, will hiss like a cornered rattlesnake. They festoon their nests with corncobs, bison dung, shreds of fabric, even pieces of potato. Long-eared Owls roost in huge colonies, which, like the colonies of Cliff Swallows, may act as information centres. Scientists studying barn owls have discovered that the baby owls sleep like baby humans, spending more time in REM (or dream) sleep than adult owls. Why? Can owls help us determine the role of REM sleep in brain development in both birds and humans? Do owls talk in their sleep?
Most owls are socially monogamous, pairing up to breed, but research suggests they’re also genetically monogamous – unlikely to engage in extra-pair copulations – highly unusual in the bird world. This may be so, but are they as loyal to their mates as we imagine?
Owls are known as ‘wolves of the sky’ for more good reasons than ever. Fierce hunters, they take all kinds of prey, from mice and birds to opossums and small deer, and even other owls. But they also occasionally scavenge, everything from porcupines to crocodiles and Bowhead Whales. Elf Owls dine on scorpions – only after they remove the venomous stingers – and, like other owls, get most of the water they need from their prey. Stygian Owls, which prey primarily on birds, have figured out how to find a whole night’s feast in a single swoop. According to Brazilian ornithologist José Carlos Motta-Junior, the owls use the noises of gregarious group-roosting birds like Blue‑Black Grass-quits to zero in on them and then, one by one, take the whole assembly. ‘I found pellets with the remains of five or more grass-quits, my record being a pellet with eleven!’
Ground-breaking work on owl senses is shedding light on the superpowers that allow these birds to find their prey at night – the strange features of their superb night vision and hearing, their extraordinary ability to locate noises, their near soundless flight – adaptations that make owls a pinnacle not just of the food chain but of evolution itself. Owls may have lost some ability to distinguish colour over evolutionary time, but they have exquisite sensitivity to light and movement. They can see ultraviolet light, too, with equipment that differs dramatically from most other birds. Better understanding of owl ears, described as the ‘Ferraris of sound sensitivity’, has shifted our view of their superhuman hearing and even shaped hearing tests for babies. Scientists have parsed the unexpected ways a Great Gray Owl performs a stunning feat in winter – catching voles hidden deep beneath snow by sound alone.
