From a distance, it looks like a cat; Seen from close range, it looks like a bird. It catches mice at night and sleeps during the day.

Owls were not all evil incarnations in ancient times. In ancient Greek mythology, there was a goddess of wisdom named Athena. It is said that her favorite bird is an owl. So the ancient Greeks worshipped the owl very much and thought it was a symbol of wisdom.

So, how do owls catch mice?

Ornithologists have long studied how owls catch mice. The owl's eyes are tubular, and some people describe it as a miniature telescope. There are extremely rich columnar cells in the retina of owl eyes. Columnar cells can sense external light signals, so owl's eyes should be able to detect extremely weak light. If the bird's eye is compared to a camera, then the eyes of most birds suitable for daytime activities are small-caliber standard lenses, and the eyes of owls are large-caliber long-focal telescope heads. Therefore, for a long time, people have always thought that owls fly and prey in the dark by vision. However, if the visual sensory system of ordinary birds is used to measure the owl, then to achieve the owl's vision, its whole brain must be composed of visual nerves!

In modern times, advanced science and technology have pushed the study of owl behavior to a new stage. Some ornithologists put the barn owl (a kind of owl) in a completely dark room and observed its mouse-catching activities with infrared photography equipment. This experiment is very clever. There is nothing in the room except some scraps of paper scattered on the ground. At the beginning of the experiment, ornithologists put a mouse into the laboratory and began to video. It is found from the video that as long as the mouse steps on the ground, the barn owl can catch it quickly and accurately.

Further research by ornithologists found that owl's hearing is very sensitive, and hearing plays a major role in positioning in opaque dark environment. Owl's left and right ears are asymmetrical, the left ear canal is obviously wider than the right ear canal, and the eardrum of the left ear is developed. Most owls also have a cluster of ear feathers, which form human-like auricles. Owls have well-developed auditory nerves. A barn owl weighing only 300 grams has about 95,000 auditory nerve cells, while a crow weighing about 600 grams has only 27,000. In addition, the owl's face is covered with hard feathers, and this panel is a good sound wave collector. Owl's huge head widens the distance between its ears, which can enhance the resolution of sound waves. When an owl searches for prey in the dark, its first reaction to sound is to turn its head, just like we listen to small sounds. But owls don't really listen to their ears The function of turning the head is to make the sound waves reach the left and right ears at different times. When this time difference increases to more than 30 microseconds, the owl can accurately distinguish the direction of the sound source. Once the owl determines the location of its prey, it will attack quickly. Owl's feathers are very soft, and its wing feathers have velvet-like thick fluff, so the frequency of sound waves generated by owl when flying is less than 1 kHz, which is not felt by ordinary mammalian ears. This silent attack makes the owl's attack more "blitzkrieg". According to research, when an owl pounces on its prey, its hearing still plays a positioning role. It can constantly adjust the attack direction according to the noise generated by the movement of prey, and finally its claws are extended, killing two birds with one stone. Of course, the owl's vision and listening to the party complement each other in hunting, and it is precisely in all aspects that it adapts to the nocturnal life and becomes an efficient night hunting expert.

There are 133 kinds of owls in the world, and the barn owl mentioned above is just one of them. In the south of China, there is an owl that is very similar to a barn owl, that is, a grasshopper. The grasshopper's face looks like a monkey, so many people call it a monkey-faced eagle. Grasshoppers often haunt cemeteries. Their flight is erratic and their cries are shrill, which often reminds people of wild ghosts wandering in cemeteries. In fact, grasshoppers haunt cemeteries because there are a large number of wild rats for them to prey on.

Owls, also known as owls, are commonly known as owls, because their eyes are round and big, much like cats' eyes. Owls belong to the nocturnal raptors of Ostrich, with more than 180 species. There are about 26 species of owls distributed in China, all of which belong to the national second-class protected animals.

The unique feather design makes the nocturnal owl the quietest flying bird in the world, and sometimes even keeps silent to its prey. Its eyes are not born on both sides of the head like other birds, but in front. The owl's big eyes can only look forward. When it wants to look both ways, it must turn its head. The owl's neck is long and soft, and it can turn 270 degrees. Because it is a kind of prey that comes out at night, their hearing is very keen, and their ears are not on a horizontal line, which is conducive to determining the correct position of prey according to the sound made by ground prey.

Owl is one of the most widely distributed birds in the world. Owls can be seen all over the world except the North Pole. Owls depend entirely on catching live animals for food. The size of prey depends on the size of owls, ranging from insects to rabbits. The feathers around the eyes are radial, forming a so-called "face plate". The mouth and claws are bent into hooks. Feathers are mostly brown, scattered with fine points, dense and soft, and silent when flying. Activities at night and dusk, the main food is rodents, and sometimes they prey on birds or large insects.