It's Maria's MutS and Stuff. What a great idea on iHeart Radio. Welcome
to Maria's Mutts and Stuff. And with me is New York Times best selling
author Jennifer Ackerman, and we're going to talk about her latest book, What
an Owl Knows. So, Jennifer, thanks for chatting with me today.
I appreciate your time. Oh it's great to be here. Thank you,
thanks so much. So. Now, you've been writing about science and nature
for over thirty years. What made you decide to write about owls? Yes,
well, I love birds, all birds, but owls they're just so
intriguing and so unusual in many ways. You know, we've been obsessed with
them as a species. I think for tens of thousands of years. Some
of the oldest cave paintings show an owl. But and they're they're just they're
they're such skilled hunters, you know, they're called wolves of the sky.
They have these amazing sensory superpowers that allow them to pinpoint their prey and in
darkness, like extraordinary hearing, in vision and dim light. And they have
these wings and feathers that are so beautifully adapted that their flight is just you
know, virtually silent um. So I just wanted to dive in and just
find out what we know about owls. And it turns out that we know
quite a bit. You know, We've been studying them for a long time
now and and some new some new technology has helped us really unearthed and solve
some mysteries that have been around for centuries. So it was a good time
to write the book. Sure, and like what okay, like a solved
mystery, what is one that's the most prevalent in your brain, that's something
that we've all been like unsure about or not sure about, like an unsolved
mystery about an owl. Well, one of the points that have really been
illuminated is in their communication. You know. We we sort of used to
think, while a hoot is a hoot, is a hoot, you know,
But it turns out, it turns out that owls have a really tremendous
and elaborate vocal repertoire, and it's actually their conversations are teeming with meaning.
This is something we just didn't know. You know. They have greeting hoots
and territorial hoots and emphatic hoots, and they titter and squawk and squeal and
all these different calls they communicate really highly specific information about an owl's size,
it secks, its weight, and its individual identity, even its state of
mind. Wow. You mean so like if an owl is unhappy or it's
stressed about something, it will hoot in a different way for that emotion.
It will, right, It'll reflect it. It's reflected in its in its
circalizations. And also each owl has a very highly distinctive voice, so they
can actually recognize one another by voice alone, and those calls, those hoots
are sufficiently distinct from one another for humans also to fingerprint individuals. So that
has been a real breakthrough. We've been able to now monitor populations much more
accurately. We can tell one individual from another. We've gotten a window yeah,
social lives. Yeah, yeah, so I'm sorry, I mean yeah,
I mean to interrupt you. So that then that's provided a window into
their social lives. Then like if they're yeah, well we've also yes,
exactly, we've We've we've got a new window on their social lives and configure
out who's mating with whom and whether pairs are actually staying together. Wow.
Wow, So I mean almost if an owl is cheating on an owl.
You we could probably know that now by the way they're communicating, and now
humans can understand that. Well, that's just it. We thought that that
many species were of owls were monogamous, you know, pears made it for
life. But it turns out now that we can actually identify by who's meeting
with whom and when and where. It turns out, to the great surprise
of scientists, that there's actually a lot of mate switching going on among whow
yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, this isn't supposed to happen.
You know, it's like a soap opera in the the owl world, and
the owl world must be like freaking out now, like, oh my goodness,
they're they're onto us the humans know, right, wow. And but
that's not the same with other birds. Is that correct? That it's more
of traits of an owl, meaning like other birds, that they don't have
the same communications that you can recognize that owls have. Oh yes, no,
though other birds also have signature calls and parents in particular, they can
recognize individuals around them by their calls, so it's not necessarily unique to owls.
But you know, we really thought that that this, We thought that
the communication of owls's very simple at terms, it's very complex, right and
and and full of meaning that we just didn't know was there. Wow,
that's fascinating. It's fascinating, it really is. And I learned from reading
your book that. I mean, because everybody knows a dog, what is
their most important part of their body, It's their nose. They do everything
through their nose. But with owls, would you say it's their ears the
same way as a dog's nose is what makes the dog able to do all
the things it does. With an owl, is it it's ears in the
same kind of yes, same respect, Yes, yes, yes. The
hearing is so essential to an owl that you know, they, especially owls,
there's some species that hunt solely by really by ear. They use their
vision some, but they're mainly hunting by ear, and their ears are just
little holes in the in the sides of their heads. They are covered with
these specialized feathers that allows found in But the it's what's inside those ears that's
really amazing. It's the equipment that they have and owls inner ears, it's
it's auditory system. They've been described as the race cards. The ferraris of
sound sensitivity. And the owls. Yeah, they have these really big cochlea,
which is the hearing organ in the brain, and it's this crazy long
and owls, you know, four or five times the length of the cochlea
most other birds. And that gives um like barn owls, a sense of
hearing that's nearly unequaled in the animal world. Wow. I mean, that's
fascinating. These are all things that the regular person, like the civilian like
me, who just knows of owls, we don't know this stuff. But
your book explains all that. That's it's really it's very fascinating, I think
because all of us always, you know, growing up or whatever, it's
just, oh, owls are just wise. Now what is that about?
Where did that come from? And is it true? I guess they are
wise, but they're complex systems. But where did that ever start that owls
are so wise? Yeah? So I think that it goes back to Greek
times for Assina, who was the goddess of wisdom, and she had a
little owl that she you know, was supposed to be her her sort of
a company, her, the animal that accompanied her. But also I think
it's because owls look a little bit like us. You know, they have
forward facing eyes, they have these round heads, so there's something deeply familiar
in them, and I think people have associated them with wisdom for that reason.
And whether they're actually and this is one of the questions I wanted to
explore in the book, is you know, they have this reputation for wisdom,
but really are they in fact smart? Right? And and you know,
we used to think that they acted pretty much only by instinct, you
know, that the behavior was kind of hardwired. But now we understand that
they are in fact highly intelligent, but maybe in ways we can't fully appreciate
yet and have trouble measuring. Um, they're they're much more subtle, harder
to read. But they do have brains that are very big for their body
sides, just like we do. And they're also very flexible in the behavior,
and they learn throughout their lives, so not all of their behaviors hardwired
by any means. They do they do actually learn. Wow, that's it's
almost human in a sense, right, Yeah. Yes. And one of
the stories I like to tell about this was an ornithologist named Rob Beauregard.
He works with a species called the bard owl and you know, you ask
him whether alf are smart, and he tells you this story about the wild
bard owls that he trains. He trains these wild owls to come to a
whistle so that he can actually tag them with a GPS tracker or retrieve the
track or if he's already put it on them. And what he does is
he puts an mouse out on a grassy area, and when the owl comes
down to catch, at which it will, he whistles, and then he
put it's out. Another mouse whistles, another mouse whistles. After three mice,
they come to the whistle and the owls they learned this in a day,
and it never takes longer than than three sessions to get a bird completely
trained. So that Wow, that's very impressive. Yeah, that's extremely impressive.
Like who would have thought that's something even a dog needs more than three
times? You know, I would just think of training dogs it's something like
that. Wow, Wow, I would I would never know. That's a
great that's a great example and a great story. Um. I mean,
you're you are very very very knowledgeable about owls and birds, and I know
that was there anything that you learned U that shocked you doing the research for
this book. You know, there was something about every species that just blew
me away. Okay, there's a there's an owl called a short eared owl
that has the wildest courtship ritual. It does what's called a sky dance,
okay, and it goes, um. This is a male bird goes shoot
straight up in the air and then it kind of drops suddenly and it claps
its wings beneath it, and it's it's a performance that's designed to impress the
female. She's on the ground watching all this, you know, distermining whether
his performance is up to snuff. Um. And there's also right right right,
and there's there's a little owl called the northern foe at owl and it
uses its of to lure or draw a woo a mate, and it toots.
It has this very high little toot and it doesn't this toot one hundred
and sixty times a minute to try to draw in a female. So some
of these quitture rituals, which is amazing. Um. And then I was
shocked to learn that there's a an owl that actually uh nests underground in the
burrows that are dug by prairie dogs or brown hogs. Armadillos. It builds
its nest underground in these burrows, and the males actually decorate the mouth of
the burrows. It's hysterical. And we're bringing all kinds of stuff like swatches
of fabric and corn cogs and you know, big chunks of moss and dried
up mushrooms and and it's really a way that the male tells other males,
this burrow is mine. It's taken. You know, I've collected all this
stuff. I'm a tough guy, right right, It's like it's man cave.
It's exactly right. But his female is in there. She's already laid
her eggs and she's nesting, so okay, he's really demonstrating, Yeah,
this is mine, stay away, this is mine. Exactly. Wow,
that's fat. I mean everything. I keep saying the word fascinating because these
are really really fascinating. It's all, you know, these facts are just
who would know, you know, like, yes, it is, it's
fascinating. I don't think I've ever heard that about any other foul doing something
like that, whether it's you know, right, some birds like yeah,
there's some birds that that decorate their uh they're bower birds that I've written about
in the past that decorate their bowers to draw and a female. But it's
all about courting and this is really about territory and establishing territory. Uh,
you know what there so true? Who studies these burrowing outs? That to
me? You know, if you want to say you're a tough guy in
the world, burrowing out you decorate your home? So funny you decorate?
I just love it. They really are. It's really true. Yeah,
and it's true of every species. There's just something absolutely astonishing about them that
you know, just uh, just I find incredibly fascinating and uh and yeah,
just they're they're so intriguing and uh. It was such a wonderful book
to work on, and I really do hope people enjoy absolutely. How long
did it take you to put this whole book together? Because I know it's
a lot of research too. Um, didn't take you over years to do
this? Yes, you know, it usually takes me three or four years
to write a book, and this one was it was about three years.
Yeah. I went out in the field with some of the best owl experts
in the world and watched what they do and and really learned from them.
It was a. It was an absolutely wonderful experience. I went in Montana
and Europe and Brazil, South America. It was really really exciting field work.
I'm sure. And I guess did you start this, did you start
writing and doing your research? I guess before the pandemic or during? Like
did that interfere with your whole projects? Yes? Yeah, it was.
It was tricky. Um, I had to work. I do a lot
of research at home, to a lot of interviewing people by phone and zoom
and reading a lot of materials. So I had a very hence information gathering
period. But then I did eventually go out in the field, and that's
the part of the research that's just most exciting to me, and and and
generate slots of really wonderful stories. I mean, some of these people who
study these words are just so interesting and so wildly enthusiastic about their their bird
of study, and they're just really fun to be with and really fun to
get stories from, I'm sure, and they're probably also very excited to have
someone like you interested in their stories and all their information. Yeah, they're
they're all of them were just to a person, they were generous with their
time and their expertise and just really excited about getting the word out about there
the work that they're doing. M No, I'm sure. So the question
that I hate to ask, but I have to ask you are are owls
of threatened species? Do we need to worry about them disappearing like so many
other creatures? Yeah? Yeah, well, you know there are it's a
it's a it's a group of birds. So there are two hundred and sixty
species. Some of them are very much threatened. Uh. There there are
the biggest threat to owls species of all kinds of habitat loss and you know,
yeah, they're losing they're losing nesting grounds and hunting grounds in old growth
forests and in grasslands. And some of these birds, some of these owls
are just so um uniquely adapted to a particular niche that they're really in trouble
when they lose their habitat. But there are other species that seem to be
adaptable on The bard owl is one, and also in some places the burrowing
owl in Europe, the tawny owl. So there are owls that that seem
to be doing okay, and um, but you know, I just urge
everyone to you know, support those conservation and research organizations that are really working
actively to try to protect these birds and their habitat, because you know,
I want people, I want our children and our children's children to be able
to see the owls that we see, of course, you know, and
learn from them. Yeah. Sure, I was just going to say that,
you know, for the generations to come, they need to know that
there's an owl and know and like we did from kids, that it's a
wise that you know, a wise creature. So yeah, I mean you
answered the question before I got a chance to ask you, like, what
can people do and support the organizations? So well, this is right?
Yeah, I mean this has just been so fascinating. Where can my listeners
get your book any place where books are sold? And I do have a
website Jennifer Ackerman author dot com. Oh perfect, So it's Jennifer Ackerman,
author dot com. That is so perfect. So I know your book just
came out, and I know you've done a lot, you know, over
your your three years to do the research for it, and you're you're probably
not thinking what's next or do you have anything that's next. I always have
to ask that because sometimes people are like, oh yeah, I have my
next three books written, and I'm like, what, but no, no,
I do have an idea for another book, another book about birds.
Okay, I'm going to be kind of owly about it and not get more
specific. Oh I love that. Okay, that's so cool. All right,
So I will talk to you again at a future date with your next
project. But right now, Jennifer Ackerman, What an Owl Knows, Thank
you so much for sharing this book and all of your knowledge and research with
us, because it really is a fascinating book and so many facts that I
learned that I'm sure my listeners will learn as well, including the photos.
I love the photos that are in the middle of the book. So so
thank you so much, and thanks for chatting and good luck with everything.
But I do appreciate all your hard work and talking about owls. So thank
you. Thank you so much. For Maria, was a delight to talk
with you. Thanks so much. Share has never been a greator operator.
And just want to see you later. For the Gator