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Happy New Year, tumblr! My first original post of 2019 is about owls!
There are plenty of reasons why we’re fascinated with owls. If we pick one for today, it’s because they can do a lot of really cool things. But sometimes, the truth can get stretched out a little more than it’s supposed to. So, let’s take a bit of time to go through two of the most common common owl myths, and learn the real facts!
1. Owls can turn their heads around all the way.
This isn’t quite true, but owls can turn their heads around three quarters, or 270 degrees in both directions. So, starting from the front, they can look to one side, right behind them, around to the other shoulder, and then all the way back in the other direction. This is still pretty impressive, given that humans can only look just past one shoulder in either direction. If you think about it, there’s a reason for that, since owls have all the same things in their necks that we do, the only real difference is that they have 14 bones in their neck, while we have seven. But, just like us, they have an esophagus, a trachea, and all the important blood vessels that carry blood to the head and back down to the heart. Much like water trapped in a twisted hose, if an animal were to turn its neck all the way around, no blood or air would be able to flow, and that’s why owls can’t quite turn their heads a full 360 degrees.
2. Owls do this because their eyes are so large, they can’t move freely in their sockets like ours do.
It is true that an owl’s eyes are immobilized in its skull due to their sheer size. However, that’s not the only reason they have to turn their heads so far. In fact, if you think back to something like a goose, you’ll realize that they can do it too. It’s just not as obvious with them, since their necks look a lot longer, while an owl has a dense feather covering on its neck, which conceals it and makes its movements look much more robotic to us. The truth is, nearly all birds, not just owls, have to be able to turn their heads that far in both directions, because they all have feathers. And to keep those feathers in pristine, flying condition, they have to keep them clean. Since they don’t have prehensile hands or paws, they have to use their beaks to clean, or preen, all of their feathers, and to do that, they need to be able to reach all the way behind themselves to reach their back and tail feathers.
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