Speaker 1: Drivers know what trouble sounds like.
Speaker 2: No, no, okay forward, Oh no, no, please.
Speaker 1: No, that's why they get covered from Ireland's soundest car
Speaker 1: insurance provider, Supervalue Insurance.
Speaker 3: Thanks for calling us fin and don't beat yourself up
Speaker 3: about it. Sure, I'm driving ten years and parallel parking.
Speaker 4: Still that isn't me get.
Speaker 1: A quote from Supervalue Car Insurance to get ten percent
Speaker 1: off online and we'll even throw in.
Speaker 2: Forty euro in vouchers.
Speaker 1: Teas and c supply vouchers include two twenty euro or
Speaker 1: forty eurospend. This car insurance is underwritten by AX Insurance, Deck,
Speaker 1: Super Value Financial Services, Stack Trading and Supervalue Insurance is
Speaker 1: regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's the guy who runs the local board
Speaker 2: game night hoping someone shows up at the pizza place
Speaker 2: to game Ali Ward boy Hoody. I've wanted to cover
Speaker 2: this one forever and it was all a matter of
Speaker 2: finding the right owl person and we did it. We
Speaker 2: got them. I have so much to say about this
Speaker 2: guest that I'm going to list it in bullet points. Okay,
Speaker 2: So they got their p shed at the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 2: They have studied owls for over four decades. Their papers
Speaker 2: have been cited nearly fourteen thousand times. I noticed that
Speaker 2: in their papers they thank their wife Katie, and they
Speaker 2: seemed genuinely in love. They came highly recommended by several
Speaker 2: other ologists, including doctor Gavin Jones of the fire Ecology episode.
Speaker 2: I had to beg this owl guest to be on
Speaker 2: this episode because they kept asking if they were right
Speaker 2: for it. I did this by taking a phone call
Speaker 2: as I was driving through the desert and I pulled
Speaker 2: over at a dusty turnout to chat with them for
Speaker 2: like thirty minutes about why I was already obsessed with
Speaker 2: them and their work before we recorded. This guest sent
Speaker 2: me some pictures and owl videos, but there was nothing
Speaker 2: attached to the email. And then I got another one
Speaker 2: five minutes later with the subject line oops, and the
Speaker 2: email just said I got distracted by critters outside my window,
Speaker 2: so I forgot to attach the files. When we finally
Speaker 2: did log onto chat, they were wearing a sweater with
Speaker 2: owls on it. Uh oh. I love them and you
Speaker 2: will too. It's all the field work stories and passion
Speaker 2: of a Mr. Tuddle bat guy with the soothing, mellow
Speaker 2: vibe of the Bryology Moss guest doctor Robin wall Kimmer.
Speaker 2: This one it's an instant classic. We will get to
Speaker 2: that in just a sec. But first, thank you so
Speaker 2: much to all the patrons who sent in their questions.
Speaker 2: You too can support the show on Patreon for a
Speaker 2: mere dollar a month. Thank you to everyone out there
Speaker 2: wearing ologies merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Also, if you
Speaker 2: need shorter, kid friendly episodes that are classroom safe, we
Speaker 2: have them in their own feed for you called Somologies
Speaker 2: SMO l O g i e. S. You can get
Speaker 2: them for free by subscribing to smologies where we get podcasts. Also,
Speaker 2: thanks to everyone who leaves a review for us, which
Speaker 2: helped the show so much. I read them all and
Speaker 2: this week, Unfolded Shoe wrote one that said, the other night,
Speaker 2: I had a dream, a dream in which I was
Speaker 2: in a lecture hall being taught by Professor Ali Ward
Speaker 2: and assistant Professor Jack Black. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: too will ever teach higher education together, but needless to say,
Speaker 2: this is my favorite podcast, Unfolded Shoe. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that will happen, but I am open to it. Also,
Speaker 2: we're doing our first ever live show, not Jack Black.
Speaker 2: He won't be there, but I will. It's on Monday,
Speaker 2: November seventeenth at the Bell House in Brooklyn. But we
Speaker 2: are sold out. But that's good news because it means
Speaker 2: that there might be a bigger tour coming soon. So
Speaker 2: we're gonna pilot it on the seventeenth. We're gonna see
Speaker 2: how it goes. Okay, So let's get into strigiform straight up.
Speaker 2: It comes from the Latin for owl, which comes from
Speaker 2: the Greek for owl. So cozy appunal blankie, sit on
Speaker 2: the porch in the dusk to catch some owl parenting
Speaker 2: facts why they have pokey things on their heads? Facts
Speaker 2: about eyes that left me unable to think about anything else.
Speaker 2: Owl hoots, roosts, nests, perches, Why so silent in the night?
Speaker 2: If you should get an owl box in the yard.
Speaker 2: A high profile case in the news involving owls. How
Speaker 2: researchers study and check up on them, How to boost
Speaker 2: their numbers where they need it, and what happens when
Speaker 2: there are too many owls. Also how one walk can
Speaker 2: change your life With this part one of a two
Speaker 2: part episode with researcher Professor and Gordon Gullion and down
Speaker 2: Chair emeritis at the University of Minnesota, al experts and
Speaker 2: one of the loveliest ologists, strigoformologist, doctor R. J.
Speaker 3: Gutierrez.
Speaker 4: My real name is Ralph Joseph Gutieres, but everybody calls
Speaker 4: me Rocky. I've been called Rocky since before I was born. Apparently.
Speaker 2: Who decided that?
Speaker 3: My mother?
Speaker 4: Actually, my mother said that when she was pregnant with
Speaker 4: me that if it was a girl, she would name
Speaker 4: her Rahenya, and it was a boy, she'd name him
Speaker 4: Ralph and call him Rocky.
Speaker 2: Oh was it a rocky pregnancy?
Speaker 4: Oh? I don't know. She made that decision away before.
Speaker 4: At least that's the family theory anyway, or legend, I
Speaker 4: should say legend.
Speaker 2: Well, it suits you. I feel like I think about
Speaker 2: you scrambling up rocky surfaces in the woods looking at nature,
Speaker 2: so it kind of works, right right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love this sweater too. Was this a sweater that
Speaker 2: you found her? Was this something that was made for you?
Speaker 4: No, my wife made this sweater. She knitted it. It
Speaker 4: was the first one she made. She's made a bunch
Speaker 4: of sweaters for me beforehand, but she designed this and
Speaker 4: then knitted the spotted owls. Because that's the primary owl
Speaker 4: I work on.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: I liked it so much. Ever since then, she's made
Speaker 4: a new sweater for me every year, some species of
Speaker 4: howl I've worked with, or some other species that you
Speaker 4: know we've both seen someplace in the world. And she's
Speaker 4: pretty amazing because she designs the whole thing from on
Speaker 4: a piece of graph paper and then spends a good
Speaker 4: part of the year netting it. There actually works of art.
Speaker 2: So Katie sounds amazing. If she weren't already married, I
Speaker 2: would ask her to marry me. Sounds like the best. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And now the spotted owl, this is your primary study species.
Speaker 4: That's correct.
Speaker 2: Take me back a little bit too, when owls started
Speaker 2: to sort of capture your attention, how far back does
Speaker 2: it go? Were you a birder or did you start
Speaker 2: looking at other things outside and then an owl flew
Speaker 2: over your head? What happened?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad you asked that question. I was hoping
Speaker 4: that you would, because this is a story I've never
Speaker 4: told anyone, never shared this with anyone, including my wife.
Speaker 4: And one time I went fishing with two of my
Speaker 4: cousins when I was about it must have been somewhere
Speaker 4: between eight and ten years old, and we went to
Speaker 4: the Real Grande River adjacent to Taos, New Mexico.
Speaker 2: So this is near the eight hundred feet deep Rio
Speaker 2: Grandy Gorge. Think of steep craggy rocks and sage brush
Speaker 2: and the arid American southwest plane rimmed by mountains.
Speaker 4: And on the west is this huge black chasm going
Speaker 4: through this plane. And that's what we call the Rio
Speaker 4: Grandy Box. So we drove to the box and then
Speaker 4: we would hiked down into it. And we got down
Speaker 4: there about evening time. My two cousins says, well, you
Speaker 4: wait here, We're going to go find a campsite. And
Speaker 4: I'm just a little kid, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't know, you know, one thing from the other. And
Speaker 4: I'm sitting there and it got darker and darker and darker,
Speaker 4: and I'm starting to get more and more afraid and scared,
Speaker 4: and I'm shaking, and all of a sudden it was
Speaker 4: dark then by then, but not a full moon, so
Speaker 4: it was quite a dark night, not a pitch black night,
Speaker 4: but definitely really dark. And I looked up and I
Speaker 4: saw a great horned out I could see the ears
Speaker 4: and the outline of the things. I couldn't make out the definition,
Speaker 4: and I went, wow, you know, that was really interesting.
Speaker 4: And then it's made flew in and sat next to it.
Speaker 4: So then I started thinking, well, I can actually see
Speaker 4: these things and it's dark, and at that time I
Speaker 4: didn't realize I had a very high nighttime visual acuity.
Speaker 4: And so I just then you know, followed the river
Speaker 4: bank and finally found them, you know, John it up
Speaker 4: around the campfire, and I don't know what they were thinking.
Speaker 4: They were just gonna leave me there all night. Oh
Speaker 4: so years later, I was in the army seventeen years old,
Speaker 4: going through combat training, and they put me on guard
Speaker 4: duty out in the middle of the bush and I'm
Speaker 4: sitting there by myself, and I'm getting more and more
Speaker 4: spook because it's darker and darker and darker, and they
Speaker 4: would play tricks on you sneak up, and you know,
Speaker 4: if they caught you, then you know, you get demerits
Speaker 4: or whatever. You know, they yell at you, and so
Speaker 4: I was getting all freaked out, and then I started thinking,
Speaker 4: so wait a second. I could see those owls and
Speaker 4: I could see walking along the creek. I said, there's
Speaker 4: no one going to sneak up on me, I said,
Speaker 4: I can see better than anybody. And then that's when
Speaker 4: I made this big connection with the ability to see
Speaker 4: at night and the owls and what made me really
Speaker 4: gravitate towards owls. And so thereafter, whenever I had a chance,
Speaker 4: I would spend time looking for owls. In college, I
Speaker 4: even would find, say a great horned owl nest, and
Speaker 4: then I'd go in the evening after classes and just
Speaker 4: sit there and watch them, you know, at a distance,
Speaker 4: so I didn't bother them. Eventually, I was had my
Speaker 4: first faculty position at an Ivy League school back East,
Speaker 4: and a paper came out in a jury about the
Speaker 4: relationship between spotted owls and all growth for us.
Speaker 2: In this late nineteen seventies paper, Spotted owl Abundance in
Speaker 2: Young Versus Old Growth Forests Oregon was published in the
Speaker 2: Wildlife Society Bulletin, and it was co authored by Rocky's
Speaker 2: future colleagues, and it begins by addressing that preliminary studies
Speaker 2: indicate that harvest of mature forests in Oregon and elsewhere
Speaker 2: may be causing the spotted owl to decline in numbers,
Speaker 2: and as a result, it says there is considerable interest
Speaker 2: in the habitat requirements of this owl. Whether spotted owls
Speaker 2: can exist in even aged second growth forests created by
Speaker 2: intensive timber management is of particular interest. So more on
Speaker 2: how the spotted owls are doing in a bit but
Speaker 2: rocky headed West. After reading this paper to the forests
Speaker 2: of Humboldt State University to teach and to start up
Speaker 2: more research with some grad students.
Speaker 4: And my very first graduate student wanted to study spotted owls.
Speaker 4: And his name was David Solise, And David was a
Speaker 4: Vietnam Vet. And actually many of my early students and
Speaker 4: assistance were vets. And I was very partial to the
Speaker 4: vets for obvious reasons. So I thought at the time,
Speaker 4: I said, you know, David, I said, this spotted owl
Speaker 4: could be a really big deal. This is we're talking
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy nine. Oh my god, when it wasn't a
Speaker 4: big deal.
Speaker 2: Because now forty five years later, the spotted owl ecology
Speaker 2: is a very big deal. And research began to show
Speaker 2: this steep decline of spotted owls in the Pacific northwestern
Speaker 2: United States, and as a result, these new restrictions on
Speaker 2: logging were imposed to save the old growth forests and
Speaker 2: maintain the ecology laggers did not enjoy this, and apparently
Speaker 2: they hung effigies of dead spotted owls in sawmills. They
Speaker 2: slapped bumper stickers on their trucks that read, I like
Speaker 2: spotted owls fried and kill a spotted owl, save a logger.
Speaker 2: The issue of the spotted owl conservation is drama, and
Speaker 2: it has been for decades, and from what I've been reading,
Speaker 2: it's really politically charged. We're going to get more into
Speaker 2: the standing of how many of these owls are left
Speaker 2: in the wild, what the status is, and what E
Speaker 2: colleges think we should do about it. Again, lots of drama,
Speaker 2: but the short of it is it's a big deal.
Speaker 2: And when you look at the authors on so many
Speaker 2: spotted owl papers, you'll see R. J. Gutierrez about seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of his grad students of the years have
Speaker 2: worked on owls. But from our first conversation on the
Speaker 2: phone as I was parked on the side of the
Speaker 2: road asking him to be on he has always been
Speaker 2: really humble and gracious and credits others for their work.
Speaker 4: I've just been blessed by having just a wonderful group
Speaker 4: of students who have contributed so much to the science
Speaker 4: and conservation of the.
Speaker 2: Spot or now and people. I know this makes you uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: but people sing your praises as the owl guy so much.
Speaker 2: Where you're named in books about owls. People talk about
Speaker 2: you the legend of rockettereiras of like the owl guy.
Speaker 2: To the point where I was chasing you down like
Speaker 2: you were prey, hoping you would be on this episode.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited. And of course the praise is not
Speaker 2: something that he accepts easily. It can be hard to
Speaker 2: see yourself as others do. Even if you have great vision.
Speaker 2: Do your pupils just get bigger than other people's or
Speaker 2: were you a night owl yourself? Or have you always
Speaker 2: been like an evening person?
Speaker 4: Actually I'm a morning person, which is sort of surprising.
Speaker 4: Usually go to sleep at nine or nine thirty and
Speaker 4: get up at five and go swimming. But when I
Speaker 4: work on nows, of course you just sudjust I suppose
Speaker 4: that is one of my characteristics is adaptability. So whatever
Speaker 4: the situation calls for, I adapt to it. And I
Speaker 4: think that's something I learned both from you know, working
Speaker 4: as a kid and also being in the military. In
Speaker 4: the army, is that you have to adapt in you,
Speaker 4: to respond to situations as they arise, because I'm definitely
Speaker 4: not a night person. I prefer to go to sleep early.
Speaker 2: When it came to owls being a steady species of yours,
Speaker 2: was there a moment when you you really realized, like,
Speaker 2: owls are and I'll couch this, but owls might be
Speaker 2: better than all the other birds?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I said it.
Speaker 2: Do you have a soft spot for them particularly? And
Speaker 2: what is it about them that you love?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 4: Actually, my doctoral dissertation was on quail Mountain Quail. No
Speaker 4: one had ever done a doctoral dissertation on mountain Quail.
Speaker 4: And when I told my major professor Starker Leopold at
Speaker 4: Berkeley that I was going to work on Mountain Quail,
Speaker 4: pushed his chair back from his from his desk, and
Speaker 4: he opened the drawer and he pulled out a little
Speaker 4: string and he said, here, here's a rope. Go hang yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, he.
Speaker 4: Said, nobody's ever been able to work on mountain Quail.
Speaker 4: He said, so forget about it. And I said, you
Speaker 4: don't say you can't do something to me. That's just
Speaker 4: like raving a red flag in front of a bull.
Speaker 4: And so I took it on as a challenge, and
Speaker 4: I did complete the first PhD on mountain quail and
Speaker 4: likewise with owls, they are a challenge to work on
Speaker 4: because they're nocturnal and they're often difficult to find. But
Speaker 4: with a spotted owl, fortunately we have many people have
Speaker 4: worked on them. Eric Foresman a good colleague of mine
Speaker 4: from Oregon. He was the first one that really studied
Speaker 4: spotted owls and learned a great deal about them. That
Speaker 4: set the sort of the foundation for the rest of
Speaker 4: us to work on these birds. And so I'm not
Speaker 4: really a legend in that respect, because there's many other
Speaker 4: people that worked on spotted owls that probably know a
Speaker 4: lot more about spotted owls than I do. But regardless,
Speaker 4: that's one of the things that I find in working
Speaker 4: with species is I really enjoy challenges and something that
Speaker 4: is demanding and hard, and especially if the habitat is rough,
Speaker 4: you know, and mountain oil and bottled owls both are
Speaker 4: in usually in a steep mountains and you know, you've
Speaker 4: got to be in really good physical condition to go
Speaker 4: find them and so forth. So this is something I
Speaker 4: really enjoy. It's the challenge of these species that gallow
Speaker 4: forms as well as the owls.
Speaker 2: Just a heads up. A galliform is like a chicken,
Speaker 2: a turkey, a quail, the kind of awkward loping around
Speaker 2: the ground birds. The land fowl galliform comes from the
Speaker 2: Latin for rooster, and we do have a two part
Speaker 2: episode on chickens that we will link in the show notes.
Speaker 2: You're welcome. Also, Rocky's longtime colleague, doctor Eric Forceman, is
Speaker 2: also an accomplished strigoformiologist, and we'll touch on him and
Speaker 2: rodents in a bit. Comes to strigiforms, right, strigiformis striteformies.
Speaker 2: What makes this st for me a strige of for me?
Speaker 2: What makes an owl an owl?
Speaker 4: Well, one way do you think about this is think
Speaker 4: about the owl as an illusion. So if we peel
Speaker 4: back layers of this illusion, we get an idea of
Speaker 4: what the owl is like. So let's look at their
Speaker 4: overall appearance. So when you look at an owl, they
Speaker 4: have a big, round head and then they have big eyes,
Speaker 4: and so that sort of attracts people two owls, at
Speaker 4: least in North America and Europe.
Speaker 2: So not every culture is like me, a simp for owls.
Speaker 2: Some folks, especially in different parts of the world, are
Speaker 2: strigoform folks, So more on that in part two.
Speaker 4: And so you have this big head with big round eyes,
Speaker 4: but in fact their skull is like a triangle. So
Speaker 4: if you put your fingers together and make a triangle,
Speaker 4: that's what their skull actually.
Speaker 2: It looks like, Oh okay, so let's say your thumbs
Speaker 2: are touching, right, you've got a triangle. The short side
Speaker 2: your thumbs are the eyes, and then your pointer fingers
Speaker 2: would be the beak. So owls are not pugdogs. They
Speaker 2: are like golden doodles with a dog snout under a
Speaker 2: bunch of fluff.
Speaker 4: And so it's an illusion that their heads are actually
Speaker 4: around their whole beak and everything. It's just this big triangle.
Speaker 4: And what you're seeing is a combination of the eyes,
Speaker 4: which are actually in tubes. So they're elongated eyes that
Speaker 4: are held in place rigidly by something called a scleral ring.
Speaker 4: You can think of it as like a bunch of shingles,
Speaker 4: bony shingles, and they provide a rigid structure for its eyes.
Speaker 4: And then around that is this huge facial discs that
Speaker 4: owls have. You can see that on all the owls
Speaker 4: that they have this massive feathers that makes the owl
Speaker 4: appear as if it has this big, rounded head when
Speaker 4: it actually it's triangular when you consider the beak together.
Speaker 2: And are their eyes tubular shaped or are they in tubes?
Speaker 4: They're tubular shaped.
Speaker 2: What, Yeah, like a sausage eye.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're sort of strange. Of course, this varies by
Speaker 4: the species of owls, but most of them have that
Speaker 4: elongated shape, and there are actually some mammals that have
Speaker 4: that too, like bush babies and some of these nocturnal
Speaker 4: primates have these elongated eyeballs.
Speaker 2: So owls big puffy, feathery face and tube eyes like
Speaker 2: big fat worms, held in place by a bony plated
Speaker 2: pipe called a scleral ring.
Speaker 4: Now they have this disproportionately large eyes in a big head.
Speaker 4: I mean, their eyes are so big, like a great
Speaker 4: horned owl is five percent of its body weight what
Speaker 4: and a human, for example, it's like point zero zero
Speaker 4: three percent of the body weight. So they have a
Speaker 4: lot of investment in their eyes and in those eyes
Speaker 4: because they're held in place, they cannot move their the eyeballs.
Speaker 4: Like we can sit there straight ahead and watch people
Speaker 4: out of the corner of our eye and we have
Speaker 4: great peripheral vision. The owls can't do that. Their eyes
Speaker 4: are fixed in their head, and as a consequence, they
Speaker 4: have to move their heads to see where they're going. Now,
Speaker 4: owls are different than most other birds in that most
Speaker 4: other birds have their eyes on the sides of their head,
Speaker 4: so they have good peripheral vision, but not good binocular vision.
Speaker 4: And binocular vision is very important for depth perception, and
Speaker 4: the owls have about a seventy degree field of binocular vision.
Speaker 2: By contrast, have nearly one hundred and eighty degree binocular vision.
Speaker 2: But this adaptation, it's not just a badge of predator
Speaker 2: versus prey. Bunch of plant eaters who have to swing
Speaker 2: through trees have two forward facing eyes because it helps
Speaker 2: him judge the distance before leaping between branches and getting
Speaker 2: smacked in the face. But Rocky, because he's awesome, emailed
Speaker 2: me later, wanting to impart more details about their vision.
Speaker 2: He's the best, he wrote. Owls see way better in
Speaker 2: the dark than us and other birds because at the
Speaker 2: end of those sausage eyes, he says, they have a
Speaker 2: higher proportion of rods, which are the light sensitive structures,
Speaker 2: relative to the cones, which are the color sensitive structures,
Speaker 2: than other birds or humans. In fact, he continues, in
Speaker 2: the retina, there is something called the foviial pit, which
Speaker 2: is a depression in the retina, and that's highly sensitive.
Speaker 2: It's densely packed with only rods, the light sensitive structures.
Speaker 2: In addition, he says, many owls have this reflective layer
Speaker 2: behind the retina. It's called a tapitum lucidum, and it
Speaker 2: gathers even more light into the rods. And he says,
Speaker 2: this is why if you shine a flashlight at some animals,
Speaker 2: their eyes glow. It's light reflecting off that tap lucidum layer.
Speaker 2: So now we know this, and if you have a
Speaker 2: soft spot for creatures of the Evening, you can enjoy
Speaker 2: our episodes about lemurs, raccoons, possums. We even have a
Speaker 2: whole eye episode. But yeah, owls great binocular vision via
Speaker 2: those tubes and pipes. But as much as an owl
Speaker 2: would like to, they can't give a lot of side eye.
Speaker 4: It's not as white as ours because their other eyes
Speaker 4: are fixed. But it still gives them the ability to
Speaker 4: focus in and determine the distance of prey, as for example.
Speaker 4: And so because they have this fixed eye and binocular visions,
Speaker 4: what they have to do is turn their head to
Speaker 4: see where a sound is coming from. One of the
Speaker 4: adaptations they have evolved to compensate for this restricted eye
Speaker 4: is that they can rotate their head. They can swivel
Speaker 4: their head two hundred and seventy degrees, so they can
Speaker 4: turn it all around. When you think about twisting your
Speaker 4: haird well, we just can't do that. I can barely
Speaker 4: get my head forty five degrees around. But when they
Speaker 4: twist it, the foramen or pamena that the arteries of
Speaker 4: the neck going up into the brain, they run through
Speaker 4: these holes in the vertebrae and they are actually quite
Speaker 4: wide so that when they twist, the artery doesn't get constricted.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, because if we were able to do that somehow,
Speaker 4: we probably constrict our corodid arteries and we pass out.
Speaker 4: But they don't need that. They just switch all the
Speaker 4: way around. And the other thing is owls have fourteen
Speaker 4: vertebrae in their neck, whereas we only have seven. They
Speaker 4: have a very long neck, and that's an illusion because
Speaker 4: if you look at it, they look like they have
Speaker 4: little short necks, but actually they have a really long neck.
Speaker 4: And it's all because of this facial disc is covering
Speaker 4: things up and the feathers on their shoulders and so forth,
Speaker 4: and the facial disc it self is unique in that
Speaker 4: they can actually control these feathers. And it's like us
Speaker 4: putting our hands behind our ears and cupping them. And
Speaker 4: we do that when we want to hear something far away,
Speaker 4: and we put our hands behind our ears and cup them.
Speaker 2: Okay, So looking under the hood again, owls can spin
Speaker 2: their necks like an exorcism because they have twice as
Speaker 2: many neckbones as us, and under all those feathers they
Speaker 2: only have two fewer neck bones than a duck. There's skellies.
Speaker 2: I looked them up. They look like a completely different bird.
Speaker 2: You'd be like, what bird is this? You would not
Speaker 2: guess an owl. They also have again bigger holes for
Speaker 2: their arteries, and those disc flat faces that we love
Speaker 2: are not structural so much as tweaked through their feather adjustments.
Speaker 2: I know you're saying, the legs, the legs, the legs.
Speaker 2: We've got to talk about their weird little frog legs.
Speaker 2: We're going to get to that in part two, I promise.
Speaker 4: And also on their ear flaps, they have the little
Speaker 4: flaps on their ear that can control the opening and
Speaker 4: closing of the ears, but they also have feathers behind
Speaker 4: them that also can direct sound into their ears.
Speaker 2: So owls are hunting machines. But why do some of
Speaker 2: them have so much style in the head region.
Speaker 4: And then another thing about them is an illusion. Sometimes
Speaker 4: you see these little what we call owl ears sticking
Speaker 4: up on great horned owls and screechings.
Speaker 2: Yes, what are those?
Speaker 4: Well, we think they're probably signals of some kind of
Speaker 4: signaling device that owls that are primarily cryp props killer
Speaker 4: or that hunt in the twilight hours of dawn and dusk.
Speaker 4: That's a term we call crepuscular, and we think that
Speaker 4: they might be signals between the pair, but they are
Speaker 4: not any have anything to do with the years. So
Speaker 4: the ears are actually big long slits on the side
Speaker 4: of their heads, and the ears themselves are offset, so
Speaker 4: the ear on the right hand side is higher than
Speaker 4: the one on the left, and their head is proportionally
Speaker 4: much larger than most birds. And as a consequence, when
Speaker 4: the sound hits those ears, this is sort of mind boggling.
Speaker 4: But the difference in time between the sound hitting one
Speaker 4: ear and the other ear is thirty milliseconds, and they
Speaker 4: can actually tell the difference of the direction of sound
Speaker 4: based on that teeny you know, millions of seconds sound.
Speaker 2: To illustrate, Here are two beeps that are thirty milliseconds.
Speaker 4: Apart, and these are all these adjustments that the ls
Speaker 4: have made. And so when you look at them, it
Speaker 4: looks like they don't have ears, but they actually do
Speaker 4: have them, just these narrow slits hidden behind feathers. So
Speaker 4: the owl is sort of enigmatic in the way it
Speaker 4: appears to you. But when you, as we have just done,
Speaker 4: pull those things apart, you start to see what an
Speaker 4: owl is really like, which is a bird that has
Speaker 4: evolved to conquer the night.
Speaker 2: Are all owls nocturnal or crepuscular or are there daytime owls?
Speaker 4: There are daytime owls, there are these crepuscular evening and
Speaker 4: the morning hunting owls. As the majority of owls are nocturnal,
Speaker 4: so like burrowing owls and short ears owls, they're primarily
Speaker 4: diurnal and screech owls great horned owls spend quite a
Speaker 4: bit of their time in the evening in early morning
Speaker 4: hours hunting, but most of the rest of the owls
Speaker 4: are nocturnal.
Speaker 2: You know, when I first moved to my neighborhood. Well, first,
Speaker 2: I had lived in an apartment in a busy part
Speaker 2: of LA for a while. But when I moved to
Speaker 2: this house, we had much more nature. And I found
Speaker 2: a feather and they looked at it closely, and I
Speaker 2: realized it was an owl feather because it had little
Speaker 2: sort of a serrated edge, and I freaked out so excited.
Speaker 2: And sure enough we have a pair of great horned
Speaker 2: owls and you can hear the OOO at night, all
Speaker 2: at night.
Speaker 4: It's so great. I love them.
Speaker 2: We see them all the time. But can you explain
Speaker 2: a little bit about how they're so quiet? Because one
Speaker 2: will fly right by me. You can't hear a sound.
Speaker 2: And do all owls have that? Are only some?
Speaker 4: Well? Versusly all owls have silent flight? Now? The ones
Speaker 4: that don't are the ones that hunt fish, like in
Speaker 4: the genus Katoopa, and some bubos like the Blackison's fish owl,
Speaker 4: the world's largest owl.
Speaker 2: So these are ten pound chunkers. And if you are
Speaker 2: thirsty for more info, I would like to direct you
Speaker 2: toward the wonderful book by another strigoformiologist titled Owls of
Speaker 2: the Eastern Ice, A Quest to Find and Save the
Speaker 2: World's Largest Owl by doctor Jonathan C. Slatt, who was
Speaker 2: a grad student of Rockies. And one reason I was
Speaker 2: so thrilled to get Rocky on this show is that
Speaker 2: Jonathan wrote about doing field work with him. So Jonathan
Speaker 2: writes about some field work that he was doing in Asia,
Speaker 2: and he writes that his guide on the trip had
Speaker 2: not met Rocky before, but his past experiences with foreigners
Speaker 2: had taught him that most were dowe, pampered, and unable
Speaker 2: to bear the discomfort of the insects sworms the cat
Speaker 2: holes and the insect sworms at cat holes that awaited them.
Speaker 2: Jonathan continues, I assured the guide that Rocky took a
Speaker 2: perverse pleasure in suffering of all kinds and viewed discomfort
Speaker 2: as an adversary best ignored. Still, doubts lingered until they met,
Speaker 2: when Rocky's rough hands and KT's rope physique showed him
Speaker 2: they were a pair accustomed to an honest life outdoors.
Speaker 2: Rocky in his sixties was zembled a snowy owl, short
Speaker 2: with large eyes under a mop of white hair. KT
Speaker 2: was about Rockies age, slight, quiet and highly observant. So yes,
Speaker 2: you can pick up owls of the Eastern Ice. A
Speaker 2: Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by
Speaker 2: Jonathan Slatt. We'll link it on our website. You can
Speaker 2: learn all about these largest owls. The endangered Blackiston's fish owl,
Speaker 2: which is allowed to brag about its nearly two meter wingspan,
Speaker 2: wings as wide as your dad is tall. Not me,
Speaker 2: not your internet dad, but like a real man dad.
Speaker 4: There's no premium on being silent because the fish can't
Speaker 4: hear you. You know, they drop down from either from
Speaker 4: a perch above the water onto there, or like the
Speaker 4: blacks and fish owlil oftentimes walk along the edge of
Speaker 4: the shore or jump on rocks and then jump into
Speaker 4: the pool and grab the fish. Getting back to your observation,
Speaker 4: which is wonderful, actually, thank you. Owls have a couple
Speaker 4: of adaptations. One is that, as you noted, they have
Speaker 4: these serrated edges, and that's caused by the loss of
Speaker 4: these little hooks that are called barbules that most birds
Speaker 4: have that actually keep the feather rasing a lock together
Speaker 4: and they've lost that, and so people have thought that
Speaker 4: that gives the owls a silent flight, but there's some
Speaker 4: hypotheses that it actually has evolved to reduce the turbulence
Speaker 4: oh behind the wing, and then they have another adaptation
Speaker 4: with these velvety structures over the tops of their flight
Speaker 4: feathers that in fact is the one that's reducing the
Speaker 4: sound that they're making.
Speaker 2: And for more on this you can please enjoy the
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen paper Features of owl wings that promote silent flight,
Speaker 2: which cites plenty of other research into owl stealth, and
Speaker 2: it notes that the large wings of these birds contribute
Speaker 2: to the noise reduction by allowing slow flight, and the
Speaker 2: serrations on the leading edge of the wing and that
Speaker 2: velvet like surface have an effect on noise reduction, and
Speaker 2: they also boost aerodynamic performance. And it notes that the
Speaker 2: fringes at the inner feather veins as well as the
Speaker 2: fringed trailing edge of the wing reduce noise. So it's
Speaker 2: a combo of those two factors, and like everything that
Speaker 2: is cool in nature, of course, engineers are like, how
Speaker 2: can we do that too, but it might take like
Speaker 2: around sixty million years to get it dialed.
Speaker 4: Those two adaptations, coupled with the way they actually approach
Speaker 4: a prey or in your case, they would fly by
Speaker 4: you to go another place, they often launch themselves and
Speaker 4: then glide. They don't do the typical bird flapping and moving.
Speaker 4: They will, of course when they're flying distances, but when
Speaker 4: they're hunting or attacking something, they come in without flapping,
Speaker 4: So the turbulence is being reduced, their sound is being reduced,
Speaker 4: and they're restricting their movements of their wings, so they're
Speaker 4: virtually silent in flight. I know a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 4: I heard an owl, you know, fly by me, and
Speaker 4: isn't now you didn't hear them. What you heard was
Speaker 4: when they landed on the branch, and the branch is
Speaker 4: going up and down. But that's what you heard. When
Speaker 4: you think about it, these things can go right past
Speaker 4: you and you will not hear them.
Speaker 2: And are they using that to sneak up on prey?
Speaker 2: Are they able with their giant, huge sausage eyes to
Speaker 2: see rodents scurrying and other crepuscular or nocturnal animals and
Speaker 2: they're just swooping down and picking them up. Is that
Speaker 2: how a lot of owls hunt.
Speaker 4: Well, we call them mostly perch and pounds predators. When
Speaker 4: I've watched them attack prey, you'll see them look very
Speaker 4: intently at something. Of course, we often use mice to
Speaker 4: get them to come down where we can catch them.
Speaker 4: It's basically like watching them hunt. It's artificial though, because
Speaker 4: we're putting some food down, but they'll often look intently
Speaker 4: and sometimes bob their head to focus in on what
Speaker 4: it is, and once they realize, they just launch themselves
Speaker 4: come in and then extend their talons and grab them.
Speaker 4: But they can also relocate, so if they hear something
Speaker 4: and they think they see it and maybe they can't
Speaker 4: really focus on it because of the obstruction of vegetation
Speaker 4: or whatever, they'll fly to a different perge and then
Speaker 4: get another view of it, and once they're confident that
Speaker 4: they can catch this thing, they make the attack. We've
Speaker 4: noticed in doing these studies feeding mice to owls that
Speaker 4: some of them seem to prefer taking prey off the ground,
Speaker 4: others from branches or the size of the trees. So
Speaker 4: we call this phenomenon when individuals get a search image
Speaker 4: for a particular type of prey, what do you want?
Speaker 4: What do you want? And now, of course owls, when
Speaker 4: you look at their diet, they're eating lots of things,
Speaker 4: but some of them seem to be very adept or
Speaker 4: prefer to take animals off of trees or off of
Speaker 4: bushes or off the ground. They have their own preferences
Speaker 4: for how they might go about doing this.
Speaker 2: And I got to ask, what's that field work?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Do you have a pouch full of live mice? Are
Speaker 2: they dead mice? Are you toss them in a field?
Speaker 2: Are you sticking a dead mouse on a tree? How
Speaker 2: do you figure that out?
Speaker 4: Well, what we do is usually use live mice to
Speaker 4: feed to them, because we have had lures that little
Speaker 4: toy store mouse that we pull along. But they seem
Speaker 4: to know the difference between something that's real and not real.
Speaker 4: And as a result, we well, Eric figured this out
Speaker 4: putting a live mice out there and then they'll come
Speaker 4: down to catch it. And over time we've developed different
Speaker 4: sorts of techniques for some nits and this nets, and
Speaker 4: then Eric developed a capture poll, and then we made
Speaker 4: noose poles and various devices to catch them, pan traps, whatnot.
Speaker 4: And now it turns out the easiest thing to do
Speaker 4: is just catch them by hand. What hell you put
Speaker 4: the mouse down, they come for the mouse and just
Speaker 4: snatch them by the foot.
Speaker 2: Are they so mad at you? You know?
Speaker 4: It's really interesting that when you catch an owl they
Speaker 4: often will build click, they pop their build together, and
Speaker 4: that's sort of an agitation display and maybe even a
Speaker 4: threat display as well. So one of the things that
Speaker 4: we realized if you watch a pair of owls together,
Speaker 4: and this is one of the things that makes them
Speaker 4: so adorable to people, is that they often roost right
Speaker 4: next to each other and then they'll alo print.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 4: You know, that means that they preene each other. So
Speaker 4: they'll get up there and they'll preen their face. And
Speaker 4: we thought, you know, what if we did that, You know,
Speaker 4: we just preen their little faces and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: you know, because they're just bill snapping and struggling and
Speaker 4: trying to get away, and then just go like that
Speaker 4: and you just start alow preening their face, and but
Speaker 4: you see they just relax. Just ah, this feels so good.
Speaker 4: That's exactly what they're doing, because you're simulating, well, we
Speaker 4: think it's alo Preening serves a couple of functions. One
Speaker 4: is reinforcement of the pair bond between the pair, and
Speaker 4: also it's feather maintenance because an owl can't really maintain
Speaker 4: its feathers very well. On its face. They can scratch
Speaker 4: and so forth. But when they get the mate preening
Speaker 4: their face except the feathers and so.
Speaker 2: Forth, are they mating for life most owls or is
Speaker 2: it totally dependent on the species? Ooh, a little cliffhanger.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned until after the break to find out about
Speaker 2: owl romance. But first, let's donate to a cause that
Speaker 2: Rocky loves, which is the International Owl Center, which is
Speaker 2: in Houston, but Houston, Minnesota, and their mission is to
Speaker 2: make the world a better place for owls through education
Speaker 2: and research, and they also have an International Owl Festival
Speaker 2: in March. Rocky and John Stratt were speakers last year
Speaker 2: and they have a bunch of resources on their site
Speaker 2: about owls, bird rehabbers, even a World Owl Hall of
Speaker 2: Fame which brings public recognition to the owls and humans
Speaker 2: that have done great things to make this world a
Speaker 2: better place for owls. You can find out more at
Speaker 2: Internationalowlcenter dot org. So I'll toast to that and also
Speaker 2: donate to that. Thank you to sponsors of the show.
Speaker 1: Drivers know what trouble sounds like? Hell?
Speaker 3: No, okay, forward?
Speaker 1: Oh no oh prize. That's why they get cover from
Speaker 1: Ireland's soundest car insurance provider, Super Value. Insurance.
Speaker 3: Thanks for calling us, bin and don't be to set
Speaker 3: up about it. Sure, I'm drive in ten years and
Speaker 3: parallel parking.
Speaker 1: Still that isn't me get a quote from Supervalue Car
Speaker 1: Insurance to get ten percent off online and we'll even
Speaker 1: throw in forty euroin vouchers. Tacencs apply. Vouchers include two
Speaker 1: twenty euro or forty eurospent. This car insurance is underwritten
Speaker 1: by ACT Insurance STACKED super Value Financial Services STACK Trading
Speaker 1: A super Value insurance is regulated by the Central Bank
Speaker 1: of Ireland.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I had just asked Rocky. Are they mating
Speaker 2: for life most owls or is it totally dependent on
Speaker 2: the species?
Speaker 4: Well, for most species, we really don't know, but it
Speaker 4: appears that most species maintain a long term pair bond.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say mate for life, because they do in
Speaker 4: fact divorce.
Speaker 2: Oh look at my son, it's not your fault.
Speaker 4: They'll leave a mate and go to another mate. It
Speaker 4: very well might be that if they're failing to nest,
Speaker 4: one mate will leave and try to find another nest.
Speaker 4: That still needs to be investigated more fully. But one
Speaker 4: of the few that we know does not make annually
Speaker 4: seems to find new mates. As a burrowing owl, they
Speaker 4: will seek out new mates each year.
Speaker 2: What are those nests like? You know, we put up
Speaker 2: an owl box before we realize that mostly barn owls
Speaker 2: like those, and we already had some great horned we
Speaker 2: were good to go on the owls. So now the
Speaker 2: great horned owls sit on top of the owl box
Speaker 2: and they do their pounds and perch from there. But
Speaker 2: what kind of nests do a lot of these owls have?
Speaker 2: Are they finding a hole in a tree? Are they
Speaker 2: building them out of sticks? Are they finding another abandoned nests?
Speaker 2: I know pigeons suck at nesting because they don't really
Speaker 2: need to be good at it if they're on a cliff.
Speaker 2: But what about owls.
Speaker 4: Yeah, owls don't build these nests. Oh yeah, observation is correct.
Speaker 4: But they will seek several different kinds of nests. As
Speaker 4: you noted, they will find and use all abandoned raptor nests,
Speaker 4: nests of ravens. They will sometimes nest in the crotch
Speaker 4: of a tree where there's accumulated debris. They will nest
Speaker 4: in witches brooms. They'll nest in big cavities if a
Speaker 4: tree is broken off at the top like an old
Speaker 4: growth forest. A lot of times older trees get weakened
Speaker 4: by disease or fungus, and a windstorm will break the
Speaker 4: top of the tree, and then you know, ten or
Speaker 4: fifteen years of rotting, there's a shallow depression there and
Speaker 4: they will nest inside that depression.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I nest inside a depression sometimes. Also I thought
Speaker 2: Rocky was just being cute, But a witch's broom is
Speaker 2: a real thing. I did not know this. And when
Speaker 2: a tree has a pathogen or some wonky growth, it
Speaker 2: can grow this clot of weird, little curly branches. They
Speaker 2: look like a bird's nest, so much so that ow
Speaker 2: will see it with their sausage eyes and they say, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: I live there now.
Speaker 4: And they don't put any kind of material, They just
Speaker 4: whatever's there are They just lay there. And of course
Speaker 4: great horned owls and some other owls will nest in
Speaker 4: cliffs just like these pigeons will. But the pigeons usually
Speaker 4: build a little flimsy nest. They're not great nest builders,
Speaker 4: but they do build a nest, whereas the owls don't.
Speaker 4: And in your situation, as you mentioned that, I was thinking, well,
Speaker 4: maybe the size of the hole in the box is
Speaker 4: not big enough for a grain horn owl. That's a possibility.
Speaker 2: Typically, will you have owls that overlap in range or
Speaker 2: are they like one owl one pair of owls is
Speaker 2: enough for one place, or they'll will they start eating
Speaker 2: each other if they're a different species.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you might be talking about two different things.
Speaker 4: But let's take these in in order. So if you're
Speaker 4: talking about the same species, there can be adjacency in
Speaker 4: pairs and some small overlap in the home range, but
Speaker 4: they have inside that home range is an area that
Speaker 4: is defended, and we call that the territory, and that's
Speaker 4: an exclusive zone. So they will exclude any other awl
Speaker 4: pair from coming into that territory if they know they're
Speaker 4: they're and that's one of the purposes of hooting, is
Speaker 4: to announce the territory and to tell people stay out
Speaker 4: of here. This is my place, please get out. But
Speaker 4: then there's the other question about different species of owls,
Speaker 4: And we have done research on this and we find
Speaker 4: that owls that are synopic that is occurring in the
Speaker 4: very same habitat can only coexist if they're eating different
Speaker 4: foods or their different body sizes, which suggests that there's
Speaker 4: something going on with a trophy level or the way
Speaker 4: they forage. So they have to be big enough difference
Speaker 4: in size for them to coexist in the same habitat.
Speaker 4: But you know a lot of times the little owls
Speaker 4: are taking their chance being in the habitat of the
Speaker 4: bigger ones because they'll get eaten.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, like little little cornish game
Speaker 2: hens to them. Should people put a bowel boxes? If
Speaker 2: someone wants to have an owl in their yard, sure,
Speaker 2: what's best way to do it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Again, it depends on where one lives. But very
Speaker 4: often in suburban areas, if there are sufficient trees, there's
Speaker 4: often small owls around, like pigmy owls or screech owls,
Speaker 4: and you can entice them to live there. And very
Speaker 4: often holes are a limiting factor for these small owls,
Speaker 4: So putting up nest boxes you very well might attract now.
Speaker 4: And of course, if you live out in the country,
Speaker 4: then there's all kinds of owls that you might be
Speaker 4: able to track, and therefore you can put larger boxes
Speaker 4: or medium sized boxes and so forth. But you have
Speaker 4: to be careful about this because you put owls and
Speaker 4: p civity that lively to eat each other, you might
Speaker 4: be doing something counterproductive, so be careful about what you're
Speaker 4: trying to attract.
Speaker 2: Should you mount the box to a tree or is
Speaker 2: it better on a free standing pole?
Speaker 4: Probably anywhere on a tree. But if you put it
Speaker 4: on a pole or on a tree, it's often helpful
Speaker 4: to place some kind of a barrier that a raccoon
Speaker 4: or other animal can't go up the pole to get it,
Speaker 4: because if a raccoon can criime up a pole or
Speaker 4: a tree and reach its little paw inside it and
Speaker 4: grab an owl at for dinner, it'll.
Speaker 3: Do that.
Speaker 2: Poor little baby. Owls are owls good parents.
Speaker 4: They are wonderful parents. And this is one thing about owls.
Speaker 4: They have a strong division of labor between the male
Speaker 4: and the female, so typically the male owl is smaller
Speaker 4: than the female. There's lots of hypotheses about why there's
Speaker 4: this reverse sexual dimorphism, this male's being smaller than the
Speaker 4: female's being larger. Be that as it may. The male
Speaker 4: is primarily the provider of food. They go out and
Speaker 4: forage and catch prey, bring it back to the female
Speaker 4: who's sitting on the nest, and the female basically after
Speaker 4: she's laid the egg. She incubates him by herself and
Speaker 4: primarily broods the young, and the male brings her food
Speaker 4: short king. She only leaves the nest to defecate and
Speaker 4: to do feather maintenance and the light or come out
Speaker 4: and receive prey. Zach Pierry one of my colleagues that
Speaker 4: I work with the University of Wisconsin, he had a
Speaker 4: graduate student, Siena Zulu, and Siana would climb up these
Speaker 4: trees and put a night camera on the nest and
Speaker 4: would determine what the prey was. And in this particular video,
Speaker 4: you first see a male owl coming in and landing
Speaker 4: and depositing a wood rat, and then the female coming
Speaker 4: from somewhere else and going into the nest, and then
Speaker 4: you see the little baby pop ups up its head.
Speaker 4: But normally what happens is the male will arrive at
Speaker 4: the nest with a prey item, and he'll give a
Speaker 4: soft call or a hoot, and the female will come
Speaker 4: out of the nest, and then he'll fly over to
Speaker 4: her and she takes it from him, and then she
Speaker 4: goes back in, and because the young are too small
Speaker 4: to really handle the prey, she'll tear it apart. And
Speaker 4: feed them bits and the things that they can't eat,
Speaker 4: like the skull. She just pops them down.
Speaker 2: A delivery for mom breakfast in bed, fresh dead rodents.
Speaker 2: When you've got fuzzy tiny screaming outlets every day his
Speaker 2: mother's day. What co parenting?
Speaker 4: So one time I had a project leader who was
Speaker 4: leading one of a projects in southern California on the
Speaker 4: San Berdandino Mountains, Bill Lahay, and he called me up
Speaker 4: and he said, I want to show you this nest.
Speaker 4: He said, this female has not moved off the nest
Speaker 4: for like two weeks. And I said, ah, that's pretty
Speaker 4: weird because oftentimes when you feed the male mouse to
Speaker 4: try to determine whether or not they have a nest,
Speaker 4: because the male will take the mouse to the nest
Speaker 4: and you chase them through the forest while he twined
Speaker 4: to the nest, and that's how we define the nest. Anyway,
Speaker 4: this female wasn't doing that. So we went out and
Speaker 4: looked at it, and you could see the female's head,
Speaker 4: just the top of her head, and this broken top
Speaker 4: tree and her tail sticking up. And we walked around
Speaker 4: around and looked at this and looked at this, and
Speaker 4: I says, you know, you ought to climb this adjacent
Speaker 4: tree and just look in there and see what's going on.
Speaker 4: So Bill, being an expert tree climber, he scrambles up
Speaker 4: the tree and looks in and he says, I think
Speaker 4: she's dead. I says, yeah. So he came back down
Speaker 4: and he puts some climbing spurs on and went up
Speaker 4: this broken top tree and he reaches in there and
Speaker 4: this female had died and the egg was in her breast. So,
Speaker 4: in other words, she starved to death. We think, well,
Speaker 4: waiting for the thing, and she was so tenacious too. Well,
Speaker 4: this is what we're speculating. She didn't want to give
Speaker 4: up incubating that egg, and so if it was a
Speaker 4: bad year and the male couldn't bring her nest, she
Speaker 4: just hung on as long as she could and then
Speaker 4: it was too late. The alternative, of course, is she
Speaker 4: got some disease or something happened to her. You know,
Speaker 4: it didn't look like anything other than she had starved
Speaker 4: to death because she was emaciated. So it was really
Speaker 4: it was sort of sad, but it gets to your
Speaker 4: point about being you know, good parents. I mean they
Speaker 4: are tenacious parents. They will take care of the young.
Speaker 2: So, as we mentioned in the Lutronology episode, which was
Speaker 2: a devastating expose on outer behavior, a mother otter might
Speaker 2: be on the brink of death because she's nursing offspring
Speaker 2: who were old enough to forage on their own, and
Speaker 2: they just keep going back to the teeth. And this
Speaker 2: is none of my business, but I'm pissed at those
Speaker 2: otter children. Also, next week, we're going to talk more
Speaker 2: about spotted owl ecology and which owls in the world
Speaker 2: are the most threatened. But how can you know right
Speaker 2: now if you are neighbors with an owl. Do you
Speaker 2: know you've got an owl nest around if you see
Speaker 2: pellets in a certain area? And also why do they,
Speaker 2: unlike all these other birds, have to kind of barf
Speaker 2: up a clot of limbs and bones.
Speaker 4: If you find pellets, that does not necessarily mean that
Speaker 4: there's an owl nest near, mind, because an owl could
Speaker 4: be nesting somewhere else and roosting there and depositing pellets
Speaker 4: at the roost.
Speaker 2: And a nest side note, is where they warm and
Speaker 2: they feed them babies. But a roost can be a
Speaker 2: nearby spot that they like to nap during the day.
Speaker 2: Just generally chill.
Speaker 4: It usually means that the nest is somewhere in proximity,
Speaker 4: but not necessarily all that close. And the other thing
Speaker 4: is about these pellets, as you mentioned. So I started
Speaker 4: thinking about what do you call it when you study pellets,
Speaker 4: you know, because see there's scatology right where there's audy
Speaker 4: of feces, you know. And I started trying to figure
Speaker 4: this out, reading books and looking things up, and couldn't
Speaker 4: found anything. Well, you know, I guess you could call
Speaker 4: it barthology, where they're barfing these these pellets up, yes,
Speaker 4: from me, But let me back up one second. Here
Speaker 4: is that pellets are cast by over three hundred species
Speaker 4: of birds, so it's not restricted to owls. So lots
Speaker 4: and lots of species do this, but the owls seem
Speaker 4: to form the biggest massive ones. And it turns out
Speaker 4: that the avian stomach has two parts, and one is
Speaker 4: a glandular part like our stomach. They call it proculus,
Speaker 4: and then the other part is the ventriculus, which is
Speaker 4: what we think of is the gizzard. So you have
Speaker 4: like this real stomach and then this like grinding organ
Speaker 4: called the gizzard, and all the soft parts get sort
Speaker 4: of digested and broken down in the stomach part and
Speaker 4: then move over to the gizzard where it's more finding
Speaker 4: ground up. Well. In the case of the owl, it
Speaker 4: turns out that the pH of their stomach acids is
Speaker 4: higher than a raptor, for example, So raptor is like
Speaker 4: a pH at one point eight or something like that,
Speaker 4: and an owl is like two point five and.
Speaker 2: Higher pH remember, means it's a weaker acid. Confusing, but that's.
Speaker 4: Enough of a difference that they cannot digest these big bones,
Speaker 4: the hair and all that sorts. Whereas many of the
Speaker 4: typical raptors they adjust a lot of the bones, they
Speaker 4: still cast pellets of stuff, but they'll digest some of
Speaker 4: the small bones. The owls don't do that. And so
Speaker 4: as as the soft parts are being digested and moved
Speaker 4: to the gizzard, the other undigestible parts that can't be
Speaker 4: broken down are pushed to the top of the stomach
Speaker 4: and sort of compacted Derek. And then once the digestion
Speaker 4: process is completed, it has formed a little mat that
Speaker 4: looks like a little turd, you know. But depending on
Speaker 4: the size of the owl, you know, the bigger the owl,
Speaker 4: the bigger the pellet and then they up chuck them.
Speaker 4: They barf them up delicious. People have speculated that this
Speaker 4: is a constant the time of it takes them to
Speaker 4: make this pellet and regurgitate. It is probably related to
Speaker 4: the size of the meal that they get in there.
Speaker 4: And I actually think that in some circumstances, if their
Speaker 4: pellet is already formed and you offer them a prey,
Speaker 4: I've seen them actually look at the prey and then
Speaker 4: start up chucking a pellet and then come down and
Speaker 4: get the one that you just put it out.
Speaker 2: They're like, let me make a little room, but they can't.
Speaker 4: Form it immediately. They're basically saying, well, you know, let's
Speaker 4: get their show on the road here.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you some questions from listeners? Are you
Speaker 2: doing okay?
Speaker 4: I know I've kept you all right, I've got all
Speaker 4: the time you want.
Speaker 2: Okay, amazing.
Speaker 4: I love this.
Speaker 2: So ask visionary people blurry questions. And thank you so
Speaker 2: much again to our j Rocky Gutierrez for being on
Speaker 2: not just this week, but next week as well. We'll
Speaker 2: have part two. We have links in the show notes
Speaker 2: to find out more about Rocky, and of course we
Speaker 2: post more research on our website. This will be at
Speaker 2: Aliward dot com, slash Ologies slash strigga Formology. Next week
Speaker 2: we are back with all of your juicy owl questions
Speaker 2: like Parliament's barnes barred owls, if you should hoot at
Speaker 2: your owl friends, omens, folklore, what not to put in
Speaker 2: your yard? A homicide case that has baffled detectives and
Speaker 2: ornithologists alike, and so much more. So Stay tuned and
Speaker 2: come back for that Part two next week, and we
Speaker 2: are at Ologies on Instagram a blue sky. I'm at
Speaker 2: Aliward on Both smologies are shorter kid friendly episodes available
Speaker 2: wherever you find podcasts. Just search Smologies s MO l
Speaker 2: O g I E. S. Ologies Merch has tots and
Speaker 2: shirts and hats at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to
Speaker 2: patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies for supporting the show.
Speaker 2: They also get first DIBs on tickets for live events,
Speaker 2: which is another perk for a dollar a month if
Speaker 2: you join. Thank you also to Aaron Talbert, who admins
Speaker 2: the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 4: Kelly R.
Speaker 2: Dwyer does the website. Nocturnal and Diurnal scheduling producer is
Speaker 2: Noel Dilworth. Our eagle eyed managing director is Susan Hale.
Speaker 2: The pair of editors sharing the branch is Jake Chafe
Speaker 2: and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick thorburn
Speaker 2: Hoo died out the theme music. And if you stick
Speaker 2: around until the very end, you know I might tell
Speaker 2: you a secret. I will tell you a secret, whether
Speaker 2: you want to or not. And this week it's that
Speaker 2: whenever I have to transfer files via an SD card
Speaker 2: from my recording device onto my laptop, I have to
Speaker 2: use a dongle, right because life isn't hard enough in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. But little secret, I usually just rip
Speaker 2: the dongle out without properly hitting the eject icon. And
Speaker 2: I know one day this is going to ruin my life,
Speaker 2: but I've gotten away with it thus far. So feel
Speaker 2: free to either like soothe my soul and tell me
Speaker 2: it's fine, or you can scare me straight on this one.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it in advance. Okay, more owls, more rocky
Speaker 2: next week, and so good. Okay, we're about pacodermatology, homology
Speaker 2: or doo zoology, lithology, Yeah, zechonology, meteorology, matternology, technology, zeiology, selology.
Speaker 2: The owls are beautiful,