Science & Math
Biological Sciences
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What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into owls-the most elusive of birds-and why they exert such a hold on human imagination
For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Though our fascination goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand in deep detail the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active in the dark of night.
Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior. She joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. We now know that the hoots, squawks, and chitters of owls follow sophisticated and complex rules, allowing them to express not just their needs and desires but their individuality and identity. Owls duet. They migrate. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows; some roost in large groups; some dine on black widows and scorpions.
Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls and dives deep into why these birds beguile us. What an Owl Knows is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of their astonishing hunting skills, communication, and sensory prowess. By providing extraordinary new insights into the science of owls, What an Owl Knows pulls back the curtain on the nature of the world's most enigmatic group of birds.
For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Though our fascination goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand in deep detail the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active in the dark of night.
Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior. She joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. We now know that the hoots, squawks, and chitters of owls follow sophisticated and complex rules, allowing them to express not just their needs and desires but their individuality and identity. Owls duet. They migrate. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows; some roost in large groups; some dine on black widows and scorpions.
Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls and dives deep into why these birds beguile us. What an Owl Knows is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of their astonishing hunting skills, communication, and sensory prowess. By providing extraordinary new insights into the science of owls, What an Owl Knows pulls back the curtain on the nature of the world's most enigmatic group of birds.
Editorial Reviews
"[A] masterful survey . . . There's fascinating trivia on every page, making for a revelatory glimpse into the lives of the ‘enigmatic' raptors. Bird lovers will be enthralled." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fascinating food for thought for owl seekers and sure to please any lover of immersive treks into the lives of birds." -Kirkus (starred review)
"Always eloquent and engaging, science writer Ackerman turns her attention to owls, those mysterious, nocturnal birds that everyone can recognize but few really know . . . Ackerman's latest vivid and compelling narrative is enlivened by her own passion for owls and her excitement over discoveries in the wild that show that, for humans, owls continue to be full of surprises . . . Captivating." -Booklist (starred review)
"Fascinating food for thought for owl seekers and sure to please any lover of immersive treks into the lives of birds." -Kirkus (starred review)
"Always eloquent and engaging, science writer Ackerman turns her attention to owls, those mysterious, nocturnal birds that everyone can recognize but few really know . . . Ackerman's latest vivid and compelling narrative is enlivened by her own passion for owls and her excitement over discoveries in the wild that show that, for humans, owls continue to be full of surprises . . . Captivating." -Booklist (starred review)
Readers Top Reviews
Kim C. Thornton
I loved this book. I'm fascinated by owls and Ackerman only reinforced that. Her writing draws the reader in, with information about the origin of owls, discoveries of new species, owl behavior (including courting, breeding and nesting), habitat, and the necessity of protecting owls in a rapidly changing world. I highly recommend it to people who are already interested in owls as well as to people who don't know anything about them. Note: I write about animals and received an advance reader copy of this book.
KathleenKim C. Th
I have just started to really get into this book and don't want to leave the house until it's completed. Honestly it is that good, I will not be donating this to the public library as I do with so many books that are OK, this is a keeper. If you are are a nature lover at all you will not want it to end.
Short Excerpt Teaser
One
Making Sense of Owls
Unpacking the Mysteries
Owls are probably the most distinctive order of birds in the world, with their upright bodies, big round heads, and enormous front-facing eyes-hard to mistake for any other creature. Even a young child has little trouble identifying them. The same is true for a range of species, including other birds-chickadees and titmice, ravens and crows-which can spot the shape of an owl instantly and single it out as an enemy. But beyond the basics of that telltale form, what makes an owl an owl? And how did these extraordinary birds get to be the way they are?
Through research on owls past and present, scientists are tracing these birds back to their earliest beginnings to make sense of their evolution and their family tree. Owls first appeared on earth during the Paleocene epoch, some fifty-five to sixty-five million years ago. Tens of millions of years later, they split into two families, Tytonidae (barn owls) and Strigidae (all other owls). Like all birds, they initially arose from a group of small, mostly predatory, running dinosaurs that were coexisting with other, larger dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago. That all changed when an enormous asteroid struck earth, triggering the mass extinction that killed off most of the big land-based dinosaurs. A few of the bird ancestors survived, including the forerunners of today's owls and all other living bird species.
As a group, owls were initially thought to be related to falcons and hawks because they shared a hunting lifestyle like these raptors. Later, they were lumped with nocturnal birds such as nightjars on account of their big eyes and camouflaged plumage. But new research shows that owls are most closely related not to falcons or nightjars but to a group of day-active birds that includes toucans, trogons, hoopoes, hornbills, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and bee-eaters. Owls probably diverged from this sister group during the Paleocene, after most of the dinosaurs died off and small mammals diversified. Some of those little mammals took to night niches, and owls adapted, evolving a suite of traits to take advantage of the nocturnal feast. Now most owls share an array of remarkable features that distinguish them from other birds and give them a unique ability to hunt at night, including retinas rich in cells that provide good vision in dim light, superior hearing, and soft, camouflaged feathers tailored for quiet flight. Of the 11,000 or so species of birds alive today, only 3 percent have these sorts of adaptations that allow for stalking prey in the dark.
Since their first appearance on the planet, about a hundred owl species have come and gone, leaving fossil traces of their existence, including Primoptynx, a peculiar owl that soared across Wyoming skies fifty-five million years ago and hunted more like a hawk than an owl, and the Andros Island Barn Owl, a full three feet tall, which terrorized Pleistocene mammals. One extinct owl that vanished from the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues relatively recently, in the eighteenth century, had a smaller brain than most present-day owls but a well-developed olfactory sense, suggesting it may have used its nose more for hunting and perhaps even scavenging.
Some 260 species of owls exist today, and that number is growing. They live in every kind of habitat on almost every continent-from desert and grassland to tropical forest, mountain slopes, the snowy tundra of the Arctic-and they range widely in size, appearance, and behavior, from the diminutive Elf Owl, a little nugget of a bird, impish, troll-like, about the size of a small pine cone and the weight of eight stacked nickels, to the massive Eurasian Eagle Owl, which can take a young deer; from the delicate Northern Saw-whet Owl that "flies like a big soft moth," as Mary Oliver wrote, to the comical, slim-legged Burrowing Owl, with its bobbing salute. There are Chocolate Boobooks and Bare-legged Owls, Powerful Owls and Fearful Owls (named for their bloodcurdling, humanlike scream repeated every ten seconds), White-chinned Owls and Tawny-browed Owls, Vermiculated Screech Owls and Verreaux's Eagle Owls, Africa's biggest, with its startling pink eyelids. Some owls, like the ubiquitous barn owls that occur in multiple forms worldwide, carry a raft of common names reflective of their mythic power: demon owl, ghost owl, death owl, night owl, church owl, cave owl, stone owl, hobgoblin owl, dobby owl, monkey-faced owl, silver owl, and golden owl.
Much to the amazement of researchers, new owl species are still turning up, including an owl that stunned scientists when it was di...
Making Sense of Owls
Unpacking the Mysteries
Owls are probably the most distinctive order of birds in the world, with their upright bodies, big round heads, and enormous front-facing eyes-hard to mistake for any other creature. Even a young child has little trouble identifying them. The same is true for a range of species, including other birds-chickadees and titmice, ravens and crows-which can spot the shape of an owl instantly and single it out as an enemy. But beyond the basics of that telltale form, what makes an owl an owl? And how did these extraordinary birds get to be the way they are?
Through research on owls past and present, scientists are tracing these birds back to their earliest beginnings to make sense of their evolution and their family tree. Owls first appeared on earth during the Paleocene epoch, some fifty-five to sixty-five million years ago. Tens of millions of years later, they split into two families, Tytonidae (barn owls) and Strigidae (all other owls). Like all birds, they initially arose from a group of small, mostly predatory, running dinosaurs that were coexisting with other, larger dinosaurs sixty-six million years ago. That all changed when an enormous asteroid struck earth, triggering the mass extinction that killed off most of the big land-based dinosaurs. A few of the bird ancestors survived, including the forerunners of today's owls and all other living bird species.
As a group, owls were initially thought to be related to falcons and hawks because they shared a hunting lifestyle like these raptors. Later, they were lumped with nocturnal birds such as nightjars on account of their big eyes and camouflaged plumage. But new research shows that owls are most closely related not to falcons or nightjars but to a group of day-active birds that includes toucans, trogons, hoopoes, hornbills, woodpeckers, kingfishers, and bee-eaters. Owls probably diverged from this sister group during the Paleocene, after most of the dinosaurs died off and small mammals diversified. Some of those little mammals took to night niches, and owls adapted, evolving a suite of traits to take advantage of the nocturnal feast. Now most owls share an array of remarkable features that distinguish them from other birds and give them a unique ability to hunt at night, including retinas rich in cells that provide good vision in dim light, superior hearing, and soft, camouflaged feathers tailored for quiet flight. Of the 11,000 or so species of birds alive today, only 3 percent have these sorts of adaptations that allow for stalking prey in the dark.
Since their first appearance on the planet, about a hundred owl species have come and gone, leaving fossil traces of their existence, including Primoptynx, a peculiar owl that soared across Wyoming skies fifty-five million years ago and hunted more like a hawk than an owl, and the Andros Island Barn Owl, a full three feet tall, which terrorized Pleistocene mammals. One extinct owl that vanished from the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues relatively recently, in the eighteenth century, had a smaller brain than most present-day owls but a well-developed olfactory sense, suggesting it may have used its nose more for hunting and perhaps even scavenging.
Some 260 species of owls exist today, and that number is growing. They live in every kind of habitat on almost every continent-from desert and grassland to tropical forest, mountain slopes, the snowy tundra of the Arctic-and they range widely in size, appearance, and behavior, from the diminutive Elf Owl, a little nugget of a bird, impish, troll-like, about the size of a small pine cone and the weight of eight stacked nickels, to the massive Eurasian Eagle Owl, which can take a young deer; from the delicate Northern Saw-whet Owl that "flies like a big soft moth," as Mary Oliver wrote, to the comical, slim-legged Burrowing Owl, with its bobbing salute. There are Chocolate Boobooks and Bare-legged Owls, Powerful Owls and Fearful Owls (named for their bloodcurdling, humanlike scream repeated every ten seconds), White-chinned Owls and Tawny-browed Owls, Vermiculated Screech Owls and Verreaux's Eagle Owls, Africa's biggest, with its startling pink eyelids. Some owls, like the ubiquitous barn owls that occur in multiple forms worldwide, carry a raft of common names reflective of their mythic power: demon owl, ghost owl, death owl, night owl, church owl, cave owl, stone owl, hobgoblin owl, dobby owl, monkey-faced owl, silver owl, and golden owl.
Much to the amazement of researchers, new owl species are still turning up, including an owl that stunned scientists when it was di...
