Here. Have an Owl.
Irradiated by LabRat
My hope for 2009, along with “rebounding economy” and “success on various projects”, is “THE RETURN OF MY FUCKING MUSE”. The bitch has absconded somewhere tropical again and left me with “Dur” as the majority of what passes for intelligent thought.
So, with that griped, courtesy of Zooillogix, a weird owl video with extra weirdsauce coming from the fact that it’s all in Japanese. While watching anything in a foreign language always makes it a bit more surreal, as the planet’s largest net exporter of weird shit, it’s always ten times more acute with Japanese. I’m not *entirely* sure what’s going on, but it appears to be an owl species that adjusts it threat display depending on the threat presented.
This is actually pretty sophisticated behavior for an owl; one fun fact that we are culturally rather blind to, with our image of the “wise old owl”, is that owls are dumber than squirrel shit, relative to other birds. Oh, sure, they have very sophisticated brains- but it’s all sensory hardware with no real room left for cognition. Think tactical strike fighter piloted by a brain-damaged Beagle- all the sensory and physical capability in the world, but there’s almost no intelligence steering it aside from the automated systems.
I once had the chance to spend time with a Great Horned Owl that had been rescued; the poor thing would essentially panic and fall off whatever it was perched on, to flutter and cheep frantically on the ground, whenever it was confronted with anything not in its playbook. Great at hunting rodents, mating, and swooping around noiselessly; terrible with anything remotely novel. Next to it, this little owl above is a virtuoso of coping with change.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Intriguing owl. My own experiences with owls are extremely limited. My ornithological experience in general is minimal; apart from a nasty incident in which I was bitten by an irate duck, I’ve never really gotten to handle a bird.
But I know that duck bites hurt. Those little f***ers have some bill when they want to.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:32 pm
We apparently live in prime owl habitat. The place is swarming with them. We hear them most nights and see them fairly often as well. The Barred Owls seem to be particularly tame (or exceptionally stupid?) and they let us and the dogs get really close.
Another bit of odd owl trivia is that some leave behind the severed heads of their prey after they feed. So — we sometimes find creepy severed rabbit heads in our yard. A friend who’s an expert in such things assures me it’s owls, not the mob, who leave these behind. But they still give me the willies.
January 1st, 2009 at 10:24 pm
I will say this about great horned owls, they are braver than they need to be. One once charged my car, on foot no less.
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 am
I worked at a wild life rescue and rehab center for a little bit. Some owls are a little dopey. Don’t make them mad though. A Great Horned Owl put its claws through a pair of gloves. WELDERS GLOVES. Right through. A Red Tailed Hawk couldn’t even replicate that feat, despite his best efforts.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Only the Japanese could make a gameshow that uses avian threat displays …
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
When I was a kid my dad and I found a Great Horned Owl up in the hills that had some damaged wing feathers. We brought it home and kept it in a back room and fed it for a couple of weeks until it could fly. The impression we got from it (it was a cranky bastard) was that it would be perfectly happy to eat us if it could.
If you go down to the Rez among the Dinè (Navajo), you will get a less than favorable reaction concerning owls; they are creatures of bad luck and are often the companions of ánt’įįhnii (witches).
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Those are both “generic” displays to eared owls including our Screech and Long- eared and are also similar to those of some other cryptically- patterned birds– Pottoos for example. The first to the less- threatening Barn owl is “I am bigger than you and scary!”.
The second to the Eagle owl (same genus as Great Horned, Scary Predator)is “No bird here, just a stick” (he even closes his bright eyes to slit as does the Pottoo).
I agree re owl brains and muse desertion (as can be NOT seen on my blog
)
And re Japan: “as the planet’s largest net exporter of weird shit, it’s always ten times more acute with Japanese.” Libby will have some Japan culture tales to tell when you get down for birds and doggage…
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
And thus proving that I don’t actually know that much about owls… then again, being around them gives me the creeps; something that dumb that is also essentially a giant set of flying cutlery is just unnerving.
We need to figure out when we can do that; I’m still getting used to the idea that I DON’T have something pressing to do/show up for immediately around the corner…
January 4th, 2009 at 7:05 am
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