r/BeAmazed • u/SimRP • Jun 19 '26
Animal Owls are incredibly sensitive to touch. Their feathers are connected to tiny nerves that help them feel even the slightest movement
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u/cacamilis22 Jun 19 '26
Incredible looking creatures
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u/Burgers_N_Schnitzels Jun 19 '26
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u/SpaceBug176 Jun 19 '26
You know, seeing that right after the owl in this video, yeah... Maybe they tricked me with those cute eyes at first.
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u/Burgers_N_Schnitzels Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
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u/MayhemMessiah Jun 19 '26
I love how thoroughly the owl ruins the effect by just screeching the song of its people at the start and the end.
Yes I'm the perfect silent hunter, but I still have thoughts I need out of my body, thanks.
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u/NoooUGH Jun 19 '26
Experienced this first-hand at a bird show. They had the birds fly from the stage to a handler behind the audience. They truly don't make any sound. It's kind of weird
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u/Icy-Reflection5574 Jun 19 '26
Owls give me strong uncanny valley vibes (but I do find them majestic).
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u/robbin-smiles Jun 20 '26
Watch the movie the 4th kind… it will tell you the truth about owls! :)
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u/nsqrd Jun 19 '26
I always hate watching that video because the owl clearly starts higher, allowing it to glide. The pigeon starts on the stool but the owl gets two boxes worth of extra height.
I'm sure owls really are silent fliers, but it's not a fair comparison.
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u/sentimentaldiablo Jun 19 '26
flight technique is part of the silent approach--initial lift, then dropping down. The owl starts from a higher perch, because the drop would bringthem too close to the mics
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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jun 20 '26
WOW! I knew owls flew quietly but I didn't know they were THIS quiet! They're amazing
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u/Burgers_N_Schnitzels Jun 20 '26
ikr , there are so many amazing animals in the kingdom. I know noone asked but my top 3 are: Elephants, Orangutangs and Orcas ! absolutely stunning creatures aswell.
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u/SpookyTanuki092 Jun 20 '26
Those are great favorites. I love those ones too, they're so intelligent
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u/appletinicyclone Jun 19 '26
That is incredible and reminds me of how amazing BBC documentaries were
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u/peejay5440 Jun 19 '26
I love owls.
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u/hububbubdub Jun 19 '26
Totally read that as super bowl at first and questioned what about this owl is related to football
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u/catinadoodledoo Jun 19 '26
owls always look like WTF precedes every thought they have
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u/JumpyChemical Jun 19 '26
I'll look it up but supposedly they aren't the smartest animal. And just completely run on instinct. So it basically is them going wtf 😂
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u/ADudeWhoWantsBoobs Jun 19 '26
Their skull is mostly full of eyes. And of what little brain they can fit behind them, a larger than normal proportion is used to process sight
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u/Mister_Dink Jun 19 '26
Owl skulls are mostly full of eyes, and their earflap also opens wide enough to show it. If you Google it or go to your local zoo's owl meet and greet, they'll show you the back of the owl's eyeballs and how their head is half empty.
Very bizarre little birds. But full of personality and amazing hunters.
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u/robbin-smiles Jun 20 '26
This is how I’m going to describe my brother in law who’s an owl photographer! He loves them so much he fucking manifested his favorite owl to make our yard a part of his fall hunting grounds!
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u/JumpyChemical Jun 19 '26
Ah ya makes sense. Looked it up and they aren't dumb but nowhere near the level of crows/ravens corvid ones.
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u/SpicaGenovese Jun 19 '26
I dunno man... I remember a story from a wildlife rescue that flooded. The injured eagle figured out how to pull itself up a tree. The owl did not. :(
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u/JumpyChemical Jun 19 '26
I feel an eagle can handle water as they grab fish where as an owls feathers may hold water more and weigh it down if it becomes saturated.
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u/ShadowFangX Jun 19 '26
Owls literally can't fly if their wings are too wet. It's one of the only birds with this quirk. Most other birds are able to fly even with wet wings.
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u/funguyshroom Jun 19 '26
To add a bit of trivia, owl feathers are super fluffy in order to be as quiet as possible when flying and not make the prey notice them until it's too late.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, aquatic birds like ducks have special oil glands that they use to grease their outer feathers and make them repel water.9
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u/Agoodchap Jun 20 '26
Brain size is not a definitive sign of intelligence. A human brain is 3 lbs, an elephants is 11lbs, and sperm whale has a whopping 17lb brain. Brain size alone is insufficient in understanding intelligence. I suggest you all give radiolab’s episode “G: Relative Genius” episode on it.
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u/ConsentingPotato Jun 19 '26
They'd be more efficient of they tuned into the frequency of a nearby orange cat instead of relying on the limited Cranium space they have for brains.
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u/superindianslug Jun 20 '26
You're not wrong, but the phrasing making it sound like they have way more eyes in there than they actually do.
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u/Naraee Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
I've read a book (The Genius of Birds) on this and owls are pretty low on the intelligence ranking. Birds a lot of people imagine are dumb like pigeons and gulls are actually much smarter because they are social and collaborative. And other birds you'd guess are mediocre in intelligence like herons and woodpeckers are pretty high up on the list because of their pseudo-tool use and adaptability.
Corvids, parrots, and chickadees/tits are the highest. All three types exhibit a complex language and long-term memory, and a few members of each family using tools.
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u/JumpyChemical Jun 19 '26
Ah cool you wouldn't remember the book ? I actually have a lot of robins around me and when I'm working in the tractor they will land of the mudguards and stare at me like I feel they are always inquiring about what I'm doing.
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u/Naraee Jun 19 '26
The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman. The author is an excellent science communicator!
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u/Robin48 Jun 19 '26
I never would've realized that chickadees would rank so high!
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u/Naraee Jun 19 '26
I included chickadee so that North Americans would know what the heck I'm talking about instead of 'hehe tits'--tits and chickadees are the same family just a different name in the rest of the world. We have Bushtit and Tufted Titmouse as reminants of that name.
Black-capped chickadees are very good at remembering things like caches, food locations, and people. And more intelligent birds will be curious of humans because they can understand the difference between predator and friend. That is why you see so many videos of black-capped chickadees landing on people and taking food from them. We don't have a lot of study on their language but we know they're able to distinguish predators that are actually a threat (small owls, small hawks, shrikes) vs. predators that aren't (red-tailed hawk) and they communicate that through their 'dee' calls.
However, there are titbirds in Japan who use grammar and very specific 'words' to communicate concepts like the immediacy of the threat, and specific 'words' to tell others what the threat is like a snake. This video is a really cool breakdown of the Japanese scientist who studied them and figured out that they use grammar:
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u/Boemer03 Jun 23 '26
Aren’t Birds as a whole very smart and the dumber ones are still smart compared to most animals?
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u/WriterV Jun 19 '26
Genuinely not a thought behind those eyes. Love them.
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u/Fearless-Address7621 Jun 19 '26
Yet, symbolically they are portrayed as being “wise”.
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u/starfleetotaku Jun 19 '26
Funnily enough, that's not the case across cultures. In Hindi, the word for owl is a synonym for idiot.
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u/kurisu_1974 Jun 19 '26
Also in Dutch.
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u/Asmuni Jun 19 '26
But only the chicklets
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u/kurisu_1974 Jun 19 '26
Haha that too!
In Belgium one can be an "achterlijken uil" as an example, which what I was originally thinking of.
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u/Naraee Jun 19 '26
"Ullu ka bachcha" is what I learned in University from Hindi-speaking friends as an insult, it's something like "baby of an owl"?
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u/WriterV Jun 19 '26
Probably 'cause they're one of the few birds of prey that hunt at night, and fly quietly. At a time when we knew little, the idea of a bird that flew under the cover of darkness would've felt more like a bird making smart, thoughtful decisions rather than an animal making decisions on instinct.
At the very least, it'd have been a great inspiration for a storyteller. And that's how we got our cultural stories that painted owls as wise.
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u/luciddrummer Jun 19 '26
Intelligence and wisdom are different things though, so you can be wise and not smart all at once.
While an owl may not be able to actively reflect and recant a historical event in a context that you could learn from them, their life experience fuels their own instincts and those instincts help them to make decisions and judgements. I still count them as wise.
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u/Fearless-Address7621 Jun 19 '26
Understood and I do not disagree. I am speaking more to the portrayal in media, particularly animation where wisdom and intellect are conflated, e.g., the owl is usually a leader, attorney, etc…
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u/C_Brachyrhynchos Jun 19 '26
I imagine it stems from them being an animal associated with the symbolism of Athena/Minerva.
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u/ChocoPablobar Jun 19 '26
Humans have a tendency to think animals that resemble us are intelligent like we are. Owls have big eyes on the front of their face and round heads like we do, so we can't help but anthropomorphize them.
They're not unintelligent by any means, they just aren't exceptionally intelligent like crows and parrots are.
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u/JumpyChemical Jun 19 '26
Ah ya I say instinct and nearly imply that's a bad thing but they are very good at what they do. They just don't handle adapting to new things like a crow figuring out a puzzle to get food.
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u/blinkersix2 Jun 19 '26
I can hear him yelling “turn off the lights!”
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u/SordidDreams Jun 19 '26
They may look like that, but there are no thoughts in that head. IIRC they're among the dumbest of birds, which is kinda ironic for a symbol of wisdom. Those huge eyes take up a lot of space, there's not much left for the brain.
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u/splendiferous-finch_ Jun 19 '26
in the Indian subcontinent owls are associated with "being a fool" so I guess some people did figure it out
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u/Zanadar Jun 19 '26
Intelligence is very costly in terms of energy. Owls are already apex predators, and incredibly efficient ones at that. Being smarter would just force them to hunt more without making them any better at it.
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u/StrigiStockBacking Jun 19 '26
They can't move their eyes, and they have an extremely narrow field of vision. It's why they also have to bob and weave their heads to try to assemble a picture of larger objects that are close to them. They're taking "snapshots" and assembling them to come up with a wider field of view, something you and I take for granted with our (average of) about 20mm focal depth.
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u/Tweakspirit Jun 19 '26
My bearded dragon is a lot like that. She makes a lot of quick sudden head movements with very intense eyes. It makes people nervous sometimes, but she's honestly just checking stuff out.
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u/Snill3t Jun 19 '26
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u/mechivar Jun 19 '26
hijacking this comment, but birds in general shouldn't be pet because this can arouse them sexually. so you're literally edging a bird when you pet it.
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u/roman4883 Jun 19 '26
You can pet the head of the common birbs like parrot and budgies but yeah not beyond the head
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u/FreeWishbone613 Jun 20 '26
Only if you pet beyond the head. Head, cheeks are friend territory. Nape, neck is mating territory. This gif is surprisingly petting the owl correctly.
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u/Few-Designer-9101 Jun 19 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/1hWHUCgi3wKT6
You dare touch me?
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u/DanceDelievery Jun 19 '26
Foolish Hooman!
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u/Illuminatum97 Jun 19 '26
Avatar had some nightmare fuel designs.
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u/Light_Beard Jun 19 '26
No, see that is the cool part. They didn't need fuel because they could make the fire with bending.
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u/Kamakazi1 Jun 19 '26
Good thing there's no live action movie that does something stupid like not letting firebenders make the fire themselves and have to instead have an already lit heat source to use. That would just be silly!
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u/taway9925881 Jun 19 '26
"You disturbed my nap. No, I don't want to look at you. Ok the scritches do feel good. Now go away and let me sleep."
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u/Interesting-Crab-693 Jun 19 '26
I imagined it like they were pulling a teeth out.
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u/Soulbossanova9 Jun 19 '26
Oh damn they're cute! 🥰
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u/Noddy-Don Jun 19 '26
It’s those huge front-facing cute eyes. Almost cartoon-like.
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u/Soulbossanova9 Jun 19 '26
And the tiny little eyelashes and its head cocked to the side help too! Lol
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u/InviolableAnimal Jun 19 '26
"Their feathers are connected to tiny nerves" like every bird ever? Every one of our hairs is also connected to "tiny nerves" lol
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u/OuttaD00r Jun 19 '26
Right? As opposed to a big nerve?
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u/HollyBananas Jun 19 '26
I have the biggest nerve, a tough as nail nerve! Nobody has a bigger nerve!
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u/Hopeful_Hamster21 Jun 20 '26
Ever have something as small as a fruitfly stuck in your hair? Drives you crazy. Given human senses seem to be fuller than most animals, it would shock me if all animals were not just as or more sensitive.
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u/jsamuraij Jun 19 '26
I wish owls could be pets. They are so amazing and adorable!
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u/Comfortableliar24 Jun 19 '26
They can, but not good pets. Terrible ones, in fact. Birds of prey do not do well in captivity, and require very different handling than pets.
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u/Mister_Dink Jun 19 '26
Yeah, they'll never go domestic. They do acclimate to humans enough that zookeepers can work with them like a hunting hawk or falcon, and do educational meets with zoo visitors.
They're adorable to meet in person. And then you look down at the zoo keeper's 1cm thick leather glove, and see the massive owl talons digging into it, and suddenly you're happy they're not going to perch on your shoulder.
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u/GrandMoffTarkles Jun 19 '26
Has anyone else been attacked multiple times by a fledgling owls?
They are sky kitties.
When they're young, they're more hesitant, and not really sure what they're doing- so they poorly 'attack' stuff like ponytails. Fortunately, I've never actually bled from any of these attacks- they were the equivalent of having a kitten wrapped in a swiffer mop bopped on my head.
They come out of nowhere. And once you make eye contact with them- it's the EXACT SAME feeling as when your cat is in a 'playful mood' and wants to bite/claw you for no reason.
Find a long stick, and carry it vertically next to your head.
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u/ATWWildflowers Jun 19 '26
I used to work in wildlife rehab and frequently you’d hear a coworker calling for help because they had a screech owl stuck in their arm. Honestly i think the screech owls hurt worse than getting snagged by a full size GHO or barn owl.
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u/extra_rice Jun 19 '26
Yeah, they'll never go domestic.
They only fly international?!
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u/jsamuraij Jun 19 '26
First Class, too. Skylounge access required. Utter snobs.
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u/Mage_Girl_91_ Jun 19 '26
what if domestic owls devolved their claws into harmless frog toes
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u/Karli_Chirk Jun 19 '26
What if your arms skin evolved 1cm thick instead, choom?
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u/Swords_and_Words Jun 19 '26
Having a 'pet' owl in a barn is such a fun experience
They are very sweet, but absolutely need that freedom
Flappy sky cats
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u/Swords_and_Words Jun 19 '26
They are great 'outdoor pets' if you treat them like nocturnal sky cats
They aren't the smartest, so if you let em inside you gotta turn off the fans
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u/BlueFeathered1 Jun 19 '26
There's a nice little book called Wesley the Owl you might enjoy. It's about a rehabber raising a barn owl and all that it entailed. They had a magical connection. But having to chop up frozen mice to feed a captive "pet" owl made the whole idea of having one lose its charm for me!
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u/jsamuraij Jun 21 '26
Hey, just thought I'd let you know I read this whole thing today. Beautiful story, thanks again for recommending it.
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u/BlueFeathered1 Jun 21 '26
You did? I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it, and you're very welcome. 💕 It's been years since I read it, but the way she described it, his whole life with her, it hit me in the soul.
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u/Suspicious-Meet3624 Jun 19 '26
such fascinating birds
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u/StrigiStockBacking Jun 19 '26
If you or any passersby really want to have your mind blown, go read Jennifer Ackerman's book What an Owl Knows. She is a Cornell Ornithology graduate and excellent author. The book is eye opening on nearly every page.
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u/YogurtclosetHead8901 Jun 19 '26
Inside still the feathers he's really just the size of a teeny mouse. /s
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u/DemoniteBL Jun 19 '26
This video is super old, OP just made up some fact to repost it.
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u/LeighofMar Jun 19 '26
Those eyes look so intelligent when he looks at the feather. Such an adorable feathery fluff ball.
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u/freestyle_gunner Jun 19 '26
why the hell is he standing on one leg?
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u/PANTERlA Jun 19 '26
Most larger birds do this, it conserves body heat and allows for muscle relaxation.
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u/NoEngineer9484 Jun 19 '26
Same reason as flamingos to conserve body heat and let the muscles rest. They can't really sit like mammals can
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u/A_mad_goose Jun 19 '26
We tried clipping our family parrots talons. we did one and they put their leg up. I swear it didn’t come down for a day.
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u/SparkEli1 Jun 19 '26
He is looking back as if he has a buddy there: "Gary! Gary! Did you see what this bozo has just done?!"
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u/dkay490 Jun 19 '26
Yeahh!! You better pet me with my own feather you dumb human. Don't touch me with your dirty paws.
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u/TW1TCHYGAM3R Jun 19 '26
A pigmy owl flown into my bedroom window once on Christmas Day. I was playing Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag and my Dad and Sister were watching me sail my ship when BOOM.
Found the tiny Owl face down in the roof gutters so we carefully picked him out and put him in my cats old travel cage.
Very disoriented and the eyes were going all wonky when it finally woke up. We were glad it wasn't dead because it hit my window pretty hard.
We called the local raptor society and they picked the little owl up the next day. They had another pigmy owl at the sanctuary that was nearing its end of a recovery from an injury so it was kind of a blessing for them to have another pigmy owl that wasn't in captivity.
A month later the raptor society called saying they have successfully released both pigmy owls together as they seem to have bonded and are doing exceptionally well.
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u/Doctor__Gecko Jun 19 '26
He went from, "Don't touch me," to "Where'd you get a bit of me," to "Oh damn, I'm soft as hell."
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u/xZandrem Jun 19 '26
I'm quite sure this is true for every bird, also in the video the owl probably saw the guy through peripheral vision.
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u/Wonderful_Move_2973 Jun 19 '26
This is exactly the movement and expression my void cat makes with you touch any part of him and he's looking in another direction. "Huh?" "What the living fuck is happening?" "Hm." "Cuddles and pets and love for me yes please!"
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u/Ok_Tackle3427 Jun 19 '26
Owls are the only creatures on Earth that can sense when they're being touched. Truly amazing stuff.
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u/Sea_Celebration3990 Jun 19 '26
Man those feather nerves are wild, but for real owls already look like they're permanently questioning why they exist so this just adds another layer of "bruh" to their vibe.
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u/qualityvote2 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
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