Owls

Owls are uniquely equipped to survive. Some of those marvels are listed here.

Vision is keen, even at night. They cannot move their eyes, therefore can only see a 110 degree arc. However, they can rotate their head about three quarters of the way around to compensate for eyes that don’t move. That would be a fatal move for us. Furthermore, their eyes have more rod cells than cone cells allowing them to see 3 times better than us in the dark. This is enhanced by a lining in the eye called tapetum lucidem which bounces light back to the rods for an extended look. If you shine a light on their eyes it glows yellow or green because of that layer.

Hearing is so keen that they can detect faint sounds. Some species have one ear lower than the other allowing them to better detect where the sound is coming from. The ears are not where you’d think they would be. The tufts on their head serve a different purpose. The face is a cupped shape to catch sounds. That facial disc of feathers acts like a satellite dish to catch sound waves. Additionally the head can turn nearly all the way around to catch those sounds. Some owls can hear a vole under 18 inches of snow from 60 feet away.

Wings and feathers are designed for silent flight. Wings are shaped like an airfoil to produce lift with fewer movements. Slower, quieter flight is then possible making the capture of rodents easier. Wing feathers are specially designed to reduce noise in that specialized fringes break the air stream into small currents.

Prey most often consists of mice and voles. An owl needs about 3-4 small rodents a day. In their 10 year life span about 12,000 rodents would have been eaten by them. These rodents would have consumed about 15 tons of grain from grain farms. Maybe owls are a farmer’s best friend.

Although owls don’t often form a flock, a group is called a parliament of owls. There is a saying about being wise as an owl, even though their collective wisdom doesn’t seem to call for a parliamentary session very often. But we can be very sure of one thing, it was not the ‘wisdom’ of the owls that developed these features. It was the superbly high intelligent design of our Creator.

Amazing,

Henry Wiebe