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THE AMAZING ANATOMY OF OWLS

Since the Middle Age, there has been a lot of mystery surrounding these nocturnal birds of prey. In some cultures, they have been repeatedly associated with magic, ghosts and spirits and, if you take a look at them, it isn’t surprising at all. There’s just something in the way they look that makes them intriguing and magical and, in today’s article, we are going to talk about a couple of their most amazing qualities. 

As they are fundamentally nocturnal birds of prey, they have developed several adaptations to be able to effectively hunt in the dark, some more evident than others. Their most famous adaptation is their big eyes, which are very different from the eyes of the other birds. To give them a better sense of depth, the eyes are facing forward, giving them binocular vision, just as us humans have, and they have tubular shape. Their shapes comes with the condition that they are fixed, which means that owls have to turn their heads every time they want to look at something. Fortunately, owls don’t have a problem with that, in fact, they can turn their head up to 270º thanks to modified vertebrae and blood vessels. 

Another essential sense when you have to hunt at night is the hearing and, of course, owls have amazing adaptations related to it. As well as their eyes, their ear-holes are facing forward, and are surrounded by folds of skin, which are thought to have a similar function to the one of ears. A crown of feathers around the face of the owl, can be adjusted to focus the sounds onto their ears and, therefore, optimising their hearing. 
As you have seen during the read of this article, owls are very special creatures. Their adaptations to the nocturnal life crown them as one of the evolutionary successes of our planet. So if you ever see an owl in a tree at night, don’t be scared, but amazed.
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