Canon EOS 5D
ƒ/4
80 mm
1/25
800

I learned that the Great Horned Owl has no sense of smell and so they like to eat skunks. They swallow their food whole, so when they actually catch a skunk, which can be 5x this guy’s body weight, they just pop the head off for a yummy snack.

In a strange twist of fate, this particular owl became brain damaged from eating a golf course gopher hopped up on poison. He forgot how to fly and instead of eating mice, he cares for them – brooding over them like an egg, and feeding them like young chicks. After nurturing one mouse for six months, the animal rescue people realized that he would make a wonderful surrogate parent for stranded baby owls.

19 responses to “Swoosh in the Night”

  1. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    wonderful – are you serious?! that reminds me of the T Gondii effect of making rats "dangerously sociable" – ones that go out actively looking for cats… did you ever read that theory about T Gondii and various cultures being affected in different ways by the rate of infection?

    Reply
  2. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    Kevin Lafferty was the dude, now i’ve done a quick google

    Reply
  3. tarotastic Avatar
    tarotastic

    Fascinating as always Steve!! Happy New Year to you btw!!

    Reply
  4. peterdgross Avatar
    peterdgross

    wow. just. wow.

    Reply
  5. ranjit Avatar
    ranjit

    whoa – is that really a true story?

    Reply
  6. ArtsySF©Marjie Avatar
    ArtsySF©Marjie

    cool image !

    Reply
  7. Leino88 Avatar
    Leino88

    thought of cadyshack b4 i saw the bill murray tag,..
    LOL!
    here little gopher gopher, gopher….
    😛
    where were you to get the low-down on this particular Bubo Virginianus….?
    … and what was the situation? in some bird rehab shelter? …. some kind of tungsten, low light environment…?

    Reply
  8. flopper Avatar
    flopper

    interesting story.

    Reply
  9. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Yes, ‘tis true and strange.

    leino: Bingo! It was low-light, and I did not want to bother him with a flash. (By the way, I have the strangest photo of him, with one eye fully dilated and the other constricted to a pin-point. He has a Marilyn Manson stare in light gradients… Owls can differentially dilate their eyes to differing light levels, but they can’t move their eyes in the sockets). And yes, the owls belong to the Sky Hunters non-profit.

    biotron: I was just reading about T. Gondii in Daniel Dennett’s new book Breaking the Spell.

    The book opens with a similar story, that of the lancet fluke. It needs to get into the stomach of a sheep or cow to complete its reproductive cycle. So from the dung heap, it infects the brains of passing ants. It takes over all control from the ant, making the ant climb to the top of a grass blade to catch a ride back into the stomach of a grazing sheep or cow. The ant becomes a zombie.

    "This little brain worm is driving the ant into position to benefit its progeny, not the ant’s. This is not an isolated phenomenon. Similarly manipulative parasites infect fish, and mice, among other species. These hitchhikers cause their hosts to behave in unlikely –even suicidal – ways, all for the benefit of their guest, not the host. Does anything like this ever happen with human beings? Yes indeed." (p.3-4)

    Reply
  10. biotron Avatar
    biotron

    whoa – sounds good… looks like he’s using this great lancet fluke story as an analogy of how memes affect credulous masses for the propogation of a particular belief system… the "even suicidal" bit seems to be paving the way for discussion of kamikaze / promises of paradise for the Islamic martyr etc (worth reading this little article about possibly amusing mistranslation….)

    funny, because i was just watching Freeview re-runs of the marvellous BBC Planet Earth series, and the rainforest episode features a segment on cordyceps fungi which specialise exclusively on one particular species of insect, in this case ants. they are possessed in a similar manner to climb up high, and then shower fresh spores from the new fungi which emerges and reinfect the colony from above.

    check the footage here – the rotating camera footage of the sprouting fungus heads from the corpses of infected insects is truly staggering…

    Reply
  11. Orange_Wedge Avatar
    Orange_Wedge

    great post and discussion, Steve and Biotron. this stuff is why i keep coming back

    Reply
  12. Corydora Avatar
    Corydora

    Fascinating story and a gorgeous shot. What does he eat if he won’t eat the mice?

    Reply
  13. Today is a good day Avatar
    Today is a good day

    Love this image

    Great comments above too!
    —
    Seen on your photo stream. (?)

    Reply
  14. the-father Avatar
    the-father

    great.

    Reply
  15. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    corydora: good question…. I’ll have to ask. (I think it was frozen treats, but I’m not sure)

    biotron: wicked-cool video footage link. Thanks!

    Reply
  16. Simon Knott Avatar
    Simon Knott

    I love this image – it is full of excitement. (123)

    Reply
  17. MistyDaze Avatar
    MistyDaze

    beautiful and interesting image—alas, while this image would be perfect in the http://www.flickr.com/groups/cawildlife/discuss/72057594140862315/ discussion , Encouragement, as administrator and supreme overlord of the California Wildlife group, discourages (doesn’t allow) photos of captive animals in the main group. I’d love to see you add this photo to the discussion of captive / rescued animals.

    Sad story about this guy–what rescue group is he with?

    Reply
  18. cherrycol@ Avatar
    cherrycol@


    A+++ Grade Photo

    Reply
  19. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Check out this sequence of a Great Grey Owl in Minnesota:

    331020-swooping-great-grey-owl

    330744-swooping-great-grey-owl

    331038-swooping-great-grey-owl

    And the current New Scientist sheds light on their senses. In this case, the owl has ears offset asymmetrically on the skull at 2 and 7 o’clock and the differential timing and volume allows it to pinpoint prey, even when the rodent is scurrying in tunnels under snow.

    “Intriguingly, the hearing ability of birds living in temperate climes fluctuates through the year. The auditory regions of their brains grow during the breeding season, then shrink when song becomes less important. Understanding this process could provide clues to treating Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.”

    “Another important difference between bird and human hearing occurs in the inner ear, and especially in the cochlea – the structure containing the vibration-sensitive "hearing" hairs. It is snail-shaped in humans, hence its name, whereas in birds it is banana-shaped. In both, the hair cells detect changes in pressure and transform these into electrical signals, which are interpreted as sound in the brain. Crucially, we cannot replace damaged hair cells, making deafness a scourge in older people. Birds, have no such problem: they can grow new hair cells. If we can discover the genetic basis underpinning this difference, it could give us the potential to solve a common cause of age-related hearing loss.”

    Reply

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