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Amazing Things About the Great Horned Owl
As seen in Nature News, Liberty Wildlife's E-Newsletter. To subscribe, click here.
They Don't Have Horns: The two things sticking up from the great horned owls head are tufts of feathers called plumicorns not horns at all. This owl is also sometimes called the big-eared owl but the plumicorns aren't ears, either.
They Don't Have Two Similar Ears: Owls hear exceptionally well because one ear is positioned higher on the skull, for hearing noises from above, and the other is lower, for hearing noises below. This is called asynchronous hearing.
Their Faces Help Their Hearing: On the faces of most owls, including the great horned owl, very short feathers in a rounded pattern form a facial disk. The facial disk acts just like a satellite dish, receiving sounds and funneling them to the ears, which are hidden beneath feathers on the sides of the skull.
They Can't Move Their Eyes Other Than to Blink: Owl eyes are fixed forward, so when the owl wants to see something off to one side, it must turn its whole head in that direction. Because its fourteen neck bones (vertebrae) are very flexible, the owl can turn its head 270 degrees in either direction, which is almost a full circle. We humans have seven neck bones. Guess what: giraffes also have only seven neck bones.
They're Color-Blind: Great horned owls see the world in shades of black and white.
They See Much Better: At night, great horned owls may be able to see as much as 100 times better than people can.
They Eat Anything: Although the great horned owls favorite foods are rodents, rabbits and hares, they have been known to eat 253 other species of animals including scorpions, rattlesnakes, armadillos, and even young alligators. Great horned owls can and do bring down prey animals that weigh three times more than themselves.
They Love Skunks: Great horned owls love to chow down on skunks and aren't bothered at all by the horrible smell because owls don't have a sense of smell.
They Prefer to Fly But: Almost always, great horned owls fly to find their food. But they will also hunt by walking along the ground sometimes even wading into water to catch frogs or fish.
They Fly Silently: Great horned owls, like most owls, can fly very silently because the ends of their flight feathers don't have barbules, the tiny hooks that almost all other bird feathers have. When typical feathers are in flight, their barbules rubbing against each other make lots of noise.
They Ignore Winter: Not all great horned owls migrate.
They Don't Build Nests: Great horned owls don't construct new nests or repair old ones. They frequently will steal a hawk's nest, or just roost in a cave or on a ledge.
They Help Fruit Trees Grow Maybe: The Hopi Indians used to believe that the great horned owl helped their peaches grow.
They Have Huge Eyes: If our eyes were the same proportion to our heads as a great horned owls eyes are, then our eyes would be the size of oranges.
Owl Facts
There are 217 species of owls in the world. That's an extremely small number. By way of comparison, there are 300,000 species of beetles.
Of all species of owl, only seventeen are in the Tytonidae, the barn owl family; all the others, including the great horned owl, are in the Strigidae family, the typical owls. In prehistoric times there were gigantic barn owls three times bigger than today's great horned owl.
There is only one species of great horned owl (and its scientific name is Bubo virginianus, so named because it was first seen in Virginia), but there are twenty-one subspecies. The great horned owls that live in South America are slightly different from the ones that live in Arizona, but not different enough to be a whole different species.
Two-thirds of all owl species are nocturnal (active at night) or crepuscular (active at dusk or dawn); one-third are diurnal (active in the daytime).
Great Horned Owl Facts
Girls are Bigger: Great horned owl females are as much as 20% larger than males.
Size: One of the biggest owls in the world, the great horned owl can grow up to 27 inches long but its wingspan can be more than twice that: 60 inches long. To understand what a wingspan of 60 inches means, look at a lady: the average height of American women is 64 1/2 inches.
Weight: An average North American great horned owl might weigh up to 40 ounces, which is 2 1/2 pounds. That's not very heavy most pet cats weigh about 10 pounds.
Flight: The great horned owl can fly up to 40 miles per hour. Golden eagles can fly twice that fast, and ostriches can run nearly that fast 30 m.p.h.
Age: Great horned owls can live up to 30 years.
Species Range: This species of owl is found in every American state except Hawaii, all through Mexico, and down into South America but it avoids the Amazon, where the vegetation is too dense for it to fly.
Home Range: A great horned owl usually lives and hunts within a one-square-mile territory.
Owl Words
Bubo: the genus name for the great horned owl, from the Latin word for "owl." (Genus names are always capitalized, species names are never capitalized.)
crepuscular: active at twilight or before sunrise.
diurnal: active during the daytime.
nocturnal: active at night.
owl: the word comes from ule, the Old English word for "to howl," which came from the Latin word for "to howl," ululare. Our word "ululate" means to howl or wail loudly.
parliament: a group of owls.
plumicorn: the tuft of feathers that looks like a horn (related words: plumage, meaning feathers, and unicorn, from cornus, the Latin word for horn). The great horned owl's plumicorns can be up to 2 inches long.
strigiphile: someone who loves owls.
zygodactylous: describing a foot with two toes aimed forward and two toes aimed backward also called "yoke-toed." The Greek word for wing was pteron, and the word for finger was daktulos, which is where the word "pterodactyl" comes from. The great horned owl is zygodactylous sometimes. Like most birds, it has three toes in front and one in back; but the outer toe is reversible it can rotate back for a zygodactylous foot, which is much better for gripping prey or a branch.
Hogan A Great Horned Owl
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