Here's Where It Gets Interesting - What an Owl Knows with Jennifer Ackerman

Episode Date: September 20, 2023

Joining Sharon today is Jennifer Ackerman who has written a new book titled, What an Owl Knows, to discuss some new, rich scientific discoveries about these captivating and intriguing birds. Owls have often been a symbol of knowledge and wisdom, but what does an owl truly know? In a conversation both kids and adults can enjoy, Jennifer shines a light on the 260+ species of owls, to understand the depth and complexities of these enchanting creatures. Scientists are still discovering owl species due to their eerily quiet flight and camouflaged nature, but if you have ever wondered about their uniquely sophisticated communication sounds and family dynamics, or questioned how their brains work, this episode is for you.  Special thanks to our guest, Jennifer Ackerman, for joining us today.  Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Guest: Jennifer Ackerman Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, friends. Welcome. Oh my goodness, today's episode. I love it so much. I love it so much. I'm chatting with Jennifer Ackerman, who has written a book called What an Owl Knows. And if you've been following me for any period of time, you know that I love birds. I specifically love raptors and corvids and owls are among the most fascinating birds. This is a conversation that you can enjoy, that your kids can enjoy. I hope you will learn something new about owls. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting. I am very, very excited to be chatting with Jennifer Ackerman today. When I saw What an Owl Knows on a list of like upcoming releases, I was like, add to cart, I will be reading that book. So thank you for being here today.

It's such a delight. Thank you for having me. Well, owls are, I mean, they're some of the most fascinating animals on earth. And your book lays out a great case for why that is. I found them wildly interesting before I even read the book. But the more I read, the more fascinated I became. And the more I realized how little I actually knew. I am wondering, how did you become fascinated by owls? So, you know, I love birds, all birds. I started bird watching when I was a kid with my dad. And so I've written several books on birds, but this time I wanted to focus in on a family of birds or a group of birds

and really take a kind of deep dive into their biology and behavior. And I thought, well, owls, you know, they're just so unique in the bird world. They're these weirdly skilled night hunters. They have this kind of eerie, quiet flight and these quite amazing senses. And humans have been obsessed with owls for literally tens of thousands of years. And they show up in myths and stories and symbols and cultures all around the world. So when I started to think about writing a book about owls, they really just made my head kind of sizzle with questions. I wanted to know what makes an owl an owl and, you know, how did these birds get to be the way they are, which is so different from other birds. They're nocturnal creatures. Why are they active at night? They have this kind of reputation for

being wise, but are they in fact smart birds? So I wanted to explore all of these questions and really find out what we know about owls. And it turns out we know quite a lot. The science of owls is really vast and quite fascinating, and we've been studying them for a very long time. But it's only, I think it's been lately, in the last decade or two, there have been the kind of advances and technological breakthroughs that we need to solve some of the mysteries that have been around for centuries. And so it made it a really good time to write the book. Totally. One of the things that I found interesting right away at the beginning of the book is you

talk about human-owl interaction and how humans for hundreds and hundreds of recorded years of history have been fascinated and obsessed by owls. Owls live on every continent except for Antarctica. And so they appear in so many human stories. And they represent a variety of different things. As you mentioned, they represent wisdom. Sometimes they represent cunning or they're harbingers of evil. They take on other meanings in a variety of human contexts. And sure, there are animals throughout the animal kingdom that mean things to different human civilizations. But owls being on every continent means that unlike a whale, for example, you know, if you are from a place that is not a coastal culture, whales are not going to be meaningful in your culture. Whereas throughout the millennia,

owls have been meaningful to a wide variety of human cultures. I would love for you to just give people a little overview of the types of meanings that owls have taken on in terms of human civilization throughout time? Yeah, so it's a really great question. And I just want to say first that humans really have been obsessed with owls for literally tens of thousands of years. Among the oldest examples of cave art that has ever been discovered isn't actually an etching of an owl. has ever been discovered is actually an etching of an owl. And it's in the Chauvet cave of France. It's from 36,000 years ago. So some person, some ancient relative of ours wandered deep into this cave and etched this beautiful illustration of an owl. So it was not a casual drawing. This bird apparently even then has kind of invested with symbolism

and maybe some spiritual meaning, we don't know. But now, all over the world, as you said, owls really appear in our stories, in our myths, our symbols, and sometimes they're symbols of wisdom and good fortune, like with the Greeks. And sometimes they're seen as witches and emblems of evil, omens of death. That's a very common one. And I think it's really a combination of things that makes these birds so powerful. They're present everywhere on the planet except Antarctica. So we see them, but we don't see them a lot. You know, they have this very mysterious quality. Also, we kind of see ourselves in them. You know, they have these round heads and forward facing eyes. And some species of owls are almost baby-like in their appearance.

But they're also so incredibly different from us. You know, they're these winged creatures of the night. And they're very fierce hunters. They're kind of very mysterious and uncanny. And I think it's that whole package of the very kind of cute and familiar and the brutal and strange that makes these birds so exciting and sometimes really very troubling to a lot of cultures. Yeah. I mean, you even see owls associated in the

United States in modern day with like Halloween. It's like, ooh, the owls and the bats. I think some of it, of course, is the fact that many species, I talk about this in the book, are not nocturnal. Some of them are more nocturnal than others, although there's a lot of hunting that happens at dusk, you also mentioned. So that might be part of it. But it is funny that other species of aggressive, creepy birds that are amazing hunters, like an eagle, for example, not associated with Halloween. It's the owl. And there is just something about them that I think, again, the fact that they're out at night, but the fact that they're so mysterious, and they don't really want you to notice them. Unlike you can drive around rural America and be like, oh, there's 14 bald eagles. Owls, on the other hand,

they're so much more elusive. And I think that adds to the mystery. I think you're absolutely right. They are so well camouflaged. They see you before you see them. And also, they appear and disappear absolutely quietly. You know, they have this very eerie, silent flight. And things are not supposed to just appear and disappear without making some noise. And I think it is why owls have this tremendous association with spirits. They seem almost magical, like their ability to appear and disappear. You can understand how humans would have interpreted that as supernatural or magical in some way. Like, where did you come from?

Yes, absolutely. There's a woman who was interviewed. A scientist did a kind of massive study and interviewed lots of people about their attitudes towards owls. And one Brazilian woman was asked why her culture and liked owls. And she said, well, it's because they enchant the landscape. And I think that's really true. There's just a sense of magic, as you say, and enchantment. And it's very unique in the bird world. I think we just don't have those kinds of associations with other kinds of birds. I think there's also something about the sounds owls make that is also so unique. They don't sing. They make a variety of sounds,

which you talk about in the book too, that it's not just like the sound that we associate with owls. They make a huge variety of sounds, but there's something about their sound that almost sounds human. Like they're asking a question in English almost. Do owls speak English, Jennifer? Well, you know, you think about an owl like the barred owl, which has that very famous call, which is like, sounds just like who cooks for you. And sometimes they have hoots and calls that sound like human screams. There's an owl called the barking owl, which literally barks like a dog. I mean, I first heard this owl, I was in the Pelaga forest in Eastern Australia with a wildlife sound recording specialist. And we were in the middle of the woods and it was night and I hear this barking. And I said, well, who has got their dog out here right now? And he said, oh, that's no dog. That's a barking owl. So they have this tremendous range of, as you say, you know, sometimes human-like calls.

The sooty owl has a call like a sliding whistle. It goes, shh. And it's just this weird sound. So, yeah, they're not songsters like our little warblers and chickadees and things. Yeah. I live in a rural area that's highly forested. And most of my property is forest. And we have quite a few owls on our property. And last winter, I started noticing when I was up early before dawn, sitting in my little chair by the fireplace,

and sometimes it gets a little too hot by the fireplace, even though it's cold outside. So I would crack the window open a little bit, but I started noticing that almost every morning, if I cracked that window open, there was an owl in the maple tree outside that window that I could hear almost every day. And there was just something so, I mean, magical is the wrong word, but that is almost how it felt like I'm sitting here in the dark by the fire, listening to my owl friend outside my window. And it certainly knew I was there, but there was still something about like that made them sit in the tree outside my window. And just listening to their calls was really, it was a really wonderful

experience to me to be able to do that all winter. Yeah, it's almost like a visitation, isn't it? You know, I had a little eastern screech owl that roosted in a box behind my house in a maple tree, and it would roost with just its little head in the round hole of the box all day long, just this little funny face there. And then at night, it would leave. I never saw it come and go, but I could hear it at night. But the variety of calls that owls make, most of us just know the hoot of an owl. It's one of the few bird calls most people know. And those are really territorial calls. So I think about that, that owl that you had next to the window was probably marking the boundaries of its territory and might've even seen you. And I don't know. This is my maple tree. Exactly. They're highly territorial in the way that they protect

their turf is through hooting, you know, which is a much better strategy than an actual physical battle. Because if you think about it, the risk of injury is so high for an owl. If they get a talon in the eye or something, it's really game over. So it makes sense that they battle vocally rather than physically. And they actually, they begin vocalizing in the egg, which was fascinating to me, even before they hatch. Yeah. A couple of days ahead of hatching, the chicks break into their little air cell in the egg and they begin breathing air. And that's when they start vocalizing. So you can actually hear their little chitters inside the egg.

Oh, that's so cute. Well, I loved your chapter about what it is like to be an owl. And of course, as much as we would love to be able to go into the mind of an owl and be like, when I entered the mind of an owl for three hours, here's what I realized. But this is really more about what science has learned about owl senses, what we now know about how they hear and what they see and what it's like to fly as an owl. And I'll tell you one thing from your book that I found so interesting that I did not know, which is that dark colored feathers, way more than light colored feathers. And that factors into the types of feather patterns that owls have and takes more energy to produce dark colored feathers. And they don't actually absorb calcium very well, even though they're eating bones. I mean, like it's so again,

this is just an exploration of how little I actually know about owls. But I would love for you to tell the listeners some things about what it is like to be an owl. Yeah, well, they are such amazingly skilled hunters really for three main reasons. They have very keen eyesight in dim light, they have extraordinary hearing, and they have this exceptionally quiet flight. All of these three things really help them in the kind of hunting that they do. So I'm going to start with the vision with an owl's eyes. They're huge for their body size. So I like to tell people, you know, if my eyes were in similar proportion to my body as an owl's eyes are to its body, my eyes would be about the size of an orange and they would weigh four pounds.

So very big eyes they have. And they have tubular eyes that are actually locked in their sockets in a forward gaze like ours are. And that gives them binocular vision just like we have. And that's a big advantage in zeroing in on their moving prey. Also, their retinas are super sensitive to light. So they can see in very dim light. And owls' pupils, they can actually swell to nearly the entire size of the eye, and that lets in about twice as much light as our human pupils do. And all of these things, their light-collecting cells in their retinas, their pupils, give

night-hunting owls about 100 times the light sensitivity of a pigeon. So they have very good night vision. Then their hearing, you know, a lot of owls, they hunt at night. So they're not so much dependent on their eyes, their eyes work with their ears, but it's really their hearing that allows them to hunt in the night. And I think it was in the 1960s that the famous biologist Roger Payne was the first to show that an owl can actually catch a mouse in the pitch black relying only on sound. And those kinds of owls, I think of barn owls, great gray owls, they really have heads that are designed for listening. They have this flat facial disc that's like a big external ear. It's kind of like a feathered satellite dish.

And it collects sound, channels it towards the owl's ears. And those ears, I should say, they're just holes in the side of an owl's head. Some people think it's the little tufts, the plumicorns on their heads that are their ears, but they're not like mammal ears. Those are actually just for camouflage. But it's what's inside those holes that just gives these owls such incredible sensitivity to sound. So they can actually pick up the faintest rustle of a vole or a mouse. They have these really big cochlea, the hearing organ in the brain. And they're kind of super, super long compared with other birds, three or four times the size of other birds. And it gives night hunting owls a sense of

hearing that's really almost unequaled in the animal world. So they can pick up just very, very faint noises. And then the final thing that they have is this very quiet flight. Now, then the final thing that they have is this very quiet flight. Now, if you think about how quiet a hunting owl has to be in order to avoid alerting its prey, and also so that they can hear the very soft sounds that that prey makes. And they have these wings and feathers that are designed to hush their flight. They have very big wings in relation to their bodies, kind of like their eyes. So their flight, it's called low wing loading and their flight is very buoyant and slow. So it's quieter, but also it's really the ingenious shape of their wings and their feathers that squelch sound. So their wings are covered with almost like a, what they call velvet. It's these plush fibers, and it prevents the feathers from

rustling together the way that most birds' feathers do, and makes them very, very quiet so they can sneak up on their prey. It's almost like when you see somebody, a musical artist, recording in a sound booth, how there's like eggshell foam on all of the walls absorbing the sound. It's almost like there's a coating on their wings that absorbs the sound and makes it so that the feathers are not making noise when they're rubbing up against each other. Yeah. And the features of an owl wing are really so brilliant at quieting sound that the designers have actually used them in modeling noise reducing structures and things like wind turbine blades, airplanes, you know, even Japan's bullet trains.

That's so interesting. You know, if you think about taking human senses and heightening them to the extent that owls have them, it would be incredibly overwhelming for a human. You know what I mean? Our brains would be like, oh, heck no. I do not want to hear this well. Like I do not. No, imagine hearing all those little rodents. No. Oh, gosh, no. I don't want to hear the little pitter patter of a fly on the wall, like their little legs going do-do-do-do. No, I don't want to hear that. Sometimes I feel like I

hear too many things during the day and I get a little overloaded, you know, like I need to hear nothing for a while. Yes, it's true. And it's amazing. It says a lot about how the brain works, whether it's in the human brain, or the owl brain, and how we tune out what is not relevant to us and tune in on what is. And I think about an owl like the great gray owl, which can be 30 feet up in a tree and it sort of swivels its head like a satellite dish until it catches sound. And then it will, just like a laser, zero in on that sound. And it can pick up the sound of a vole tunneling underneath the snow, like a foot and a half deep.

Owls way up, comes over, hovers over that area, and then dives into the snow and nails its prey. So it is very, very highly attuned to those sounds that its prey makes. Good for them. I don't want it for me, though. Good for them. It's working out for them. I don't want to hear a vole under the snow. Thanks anyway. Not helpful. Couldn't sleep. No, thanks. Hopeful. Couldn't sleep. No, thanks. I'm Jenna Fisher.

And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together, we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests, and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new

Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. You mentioned in the book too that there are hundreds of different types of owls. Yes. And some of them we just haven't even recently discovered. We think we've discovered

all the things and apparently no, we haven't. I mean, this really did blow me away. I mean, first of all, just the diversity of owls living today. It's staggering. There are 260 species and they just range tremendously in size and appearance. You know, you have the biggest owl, which is the massive Blackistin's fish owl, and it's about the size of a fire hydrant. It's also kind of wacky looking. It has these tousled ear tufts. And then all the way down to the smallest, the tiny elf owl, which is just a little nugget of a bird.

It's about the size of a small pine cone. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So tremendous range. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So tremendous range. And as you say, to the amazement of researchers, really new species of owls are still turning up.

There's one that popped up in the 1970s, high in the Andean mountains of Northern Peru, and it's called the long whiskered owlet. And it really stunned scientists. This tiny, bizarre owl, and it's so different from other owls that the scientists actually put it in its own genus, Xenoglox, and that means strange owl in Greek. But as recently as last year, a park ranger found a new species of Scops owl on the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa. So we are still finding birds. island of Principe off the west coast of Africa. So we are still finding birds.

I suppose it speaks to how elusive they can be, how mysterious and magical they are, that they're not like, what's up, researchers? You haven't written me down yet. You know, like they're perfectly happy not being discovered, clearly. They really are. And I think also a bird like the northern Saw-Wet Owl, which is a little owl, very elusive, very reclusive almost. And people thought it was very rare until they actually began to capture them in mist nets and then they would band them. They discovered that the Northern Saw-Wet Owl is in fact one of the most common raptors in North America. It's just, it's not rare. It's just that it's rarely seen. So these birds really know how to hide out and make themselves scarce. It's so interesting. One of the things that makes owls unique is the fact that they regurgitate

undigestible food. And you can actually, if you're a curious parent or teacher or whatever, you can go online and order owl pellets. First of all, why do owls do that where other raptors and other birds of prey don't do that? And you mentioned in the book that like there was a type of dinosaur that did that. But it's not like a common thing in the animal kingdom today to just be like, I'm going to eat it all. And then I'll puke up what I don't like later. That is exactly what owls do. They eat their prey whole, some of their smaller prey.

Yeah, they just take it all in. And then the indigestible parts, the fur, the claws, the teeth even, they all get compressed in this pellet in the owl's stomach. And it takes several hours, but eventually the owl will regurgitate it. And if you watch this process, it doesn't look easy. It looks like it's painful. Sometimes you see owls wincing when they eject one of these pellets because some of them are very large. Large, yes. Yes. I watched a little burrowing owl eject a pellet that looked like it was half its size. And they can't really eat again until they've done this.

So it's a very important part of the process. And these pellets actually have a very strong odor. And one of the things that I explored in the book was how scientists are actually using olfactory powers of dogs to locate rare owl species in very remote areas like the Pacific Northwest and in Tasmania. And they have these detective sniffer dogs that are actually trained to locate the pellets that the owls disgorge after eating. And the dogs can distinguish between the pellets of different species, and they can smell the odors they emit. So it's a fascinating way. And some of the studies show that the dogs trained that way could actually detect owls better than some of the normal surveys and, and the dogs could cover a bigger area. So it's an unusual way to look for owls, but it turned out to be very effective because of these pellets. Why do they do it though? Like, does science have an explanation for why owls are just like,

I'm going to eat this whole bird and then I'll get rid of what I don't want later, as opposed to other raptors who will sit and pick the flesh off of their prey. If you watch a bald eagle cam and you watch them eat their fish or their other squirrel or whatever, they don't spend time trying to swallow its whole skeleton. Right? But why do owls do that? It seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? But I think particularly of the smaller owls, they're prey too. So they don't want to be hanging around taking apart their prey. Because they'll get eaten by other raptors. Yes, exactly. Including other owls, bigger owls. Harder to figure out the bigger owl question and why they would want to eat their prey whole.

But it's one of those strange evolutionary paths that these birds took. But you talked about buying the pellets online. Those pellets have a tremendous amount of information in them about the owl's diet. And so elementary schools all over the country, you know, take them apart to figure out what an owl might be eating. And it's a very educational exercise. It is. You have to get over the fact that it's a dead animal that's been eaten and puked up by an owl. Once you get over it, it's interesting. What is owl family life like?

And I love how you talk about how nest cams have really impacted our ability to understand what owl families are like. Yeah. So they give us a really intimate view of all those little interactions that are happening at the nest. And those nest camps can run 24 seven. So you see all kinds of activity. You see sibling rivalry, you see siblings feeding each other, you see parents bringing food in, you can determine the diet. Owls in general are very good parents. They're very attentive. That female, she sits on that nest brooding the eggs pretty much 24 hours a day. She takes tiny little breaks. She needs to keep the eggs at just the right temperature. But then I think one of the most

sort of charming phases in an owl family life is when the chicks are finally ready to leave the nest and the parents watch over them, but they do something called branching, which is a really funny thing to watch. They get out of the nest, they're not ready to fly yet, but they want to go exploring. And so they'll pop up and they'll hop from branch to branch. And sometimes they'll hop long distances and they'll just drop right to the floor of the forest, and then they'll hop from branch to branch. And sometimes they'll hop long distances and they'll just drop right to the floor of the forest. And then they'll sit right back up. Some of them can actually climb vertically back up the tree to the nest. They flap their wings and they hold on with those little sharp talons that they have and they climb right back up the tree. And then the

fledging period is also very entertaining because it's not easy to fly like an owl and it takes some time, but the parents feed them through the fledgling period. Then they're out on their own, but it's a fascinating, the life of the nest is fascinating. Also the kind of courtship that happens with owls before they actually choose a mate and get together. I watched what's called the sky dance of the short-eared owl, truly remarkable, happens at sunset. The male goes straight up into the air and then he drops and he claps his wings beneath him, like he's kind of clapping at his own performance, you know. The female's on the ground and she's watching this, comparing it in her mind with the

sky dances of other males that she's seen. And, you know, she's the one who will decide whether he's a good mate or not. And then some owls court primarily vocally. That little northern saw-whet owl that I mentioned that seemed so rare, but is actually very common. It toots for its mate, and it will toot at 100, 160 times a minute. Sounds like a truck backing up to try to win the mate. And the successful guys, they get this done in a day or two, but the ones that aren't successful have to do this day after day after day, hoot and toot all a night long to try to attract a mate. So it's very laborious, not an easy life. Do they partner for life the way, say, like bald eagles do? No, we thought they did until we discovered that owls actually have individual voices.

So they have very distinctive idiosyncratic voices that scientists have figured out how to. They're so distinct. They're almost like fingerprints. So they're vocal fingerprints of an individual owl. And once scientists learned this, they could do two things. They could monitor the owl populations much more closely. And also they got this window into their social lives. It's like, oh, now they could keep track of who was pairing up with whom and whether they were actually staying together. Well, it turns out that in many species of owls, including great horned owls, Eurasian eagle owls, there's a lot of mate switching going

on. One of the scientists said to me, it's like a regular soap opera out there. And she said, this is just not supposed to happen because we always thought owls mated for life, but there's a fair amount of hanky panky and mate switching going on. Mm. Okay. So does it work like they are competing for mates, the female chooses which one she wants, then do they partner for a period of time while they are sitting on the clutch of eggs, raising the brood, and then they're like, it's been real. I'll see you maybe again someday. And then like six months later, they part ways. How does that work? Yes, that's exactly the way it works. And it depends on the species and also on the success

of the nest. If a pair is successful at breeding, they may stay together and through to the next breeding season. If they're not successful, there's a higher rate of so-called divorce when they'll try, they'll move through the breeding season, but then if it doesn't work, they'll seek out another mate. So it is sort of, I guess I would call it serial monogamy. Yeah, that's really interesting. And do male owls ever sit on the eggs? Because you do see other raptors where males will sit on the eggs at least for little periods of time as the female permits them to. Yeah.

Now, I don't think that's a thing in the owl world. The males are very, very good at bringing food to the nest, whether it's just for the female or for the female and the young. And sometimes it requires both male and female to be hunting to feed the young sufficiently. But during that period when she's on the eggs, he's mostly just trying to get dinner together for everybody. Yeah. Two dinners. I need to hunt for two dinners or five dinners. Yes. Yeah. How long do owl parents help their fledglings with food? Because learning to hunt is not a simple process. Some of it is instinctive, of course, but like being good at it, being good enough at it to sustain your own self is not something that you can just be like,

well, bye, I've been nice knowing you. It's a skill that has to be honed. Yes, it is. And most owls, so it varies by species, but the barred owls, they'll stay with their young for six weeks while they hone their hunting skills and they'll feed them during that time, supplement their feeding. Great horned owls will stay for six months with the juveniles and, you know, see them through a very long juvenile period. And just as you say, it is not all instinctive. I mean, one of the fascinating things I learned about from people that actually rehabilitate owls that have been injured, they have been fed the whole time they're in the clinic. Some of these birds are very young. So they go to what's called mouse school to learn how to hunt. And it starts with the staff putting a mouse in a sort of bin,

and the baby owls have to learn how to catch them. But it's not easy. I mean, they've never had food that moved before. And, you know, sometimes they try to capture it with their beaks, you know, and then they realize they have to use their feet, their talons. So it takes some time to sort out that whole process. I think sometimes people forget that like really high level predators, which owls are, they're extremely skilled predators. There are elements of instinct of like, I need to kill that to eat it. But if you think about like mammal predators, they get long periods of time very often with their parents who teach them how to be a good Jaguar. Here's how you sneak up on, here's how you crawl on a tree branch and then you're going to jump down and get it.

And then here's how you kill it really quick. You know, people have to parent that behavior into the young. Yes, this is true. And, you know, we used to think that owls were,

you know, kind of all, all of the behavior was instinctive, that it was hardwired. And now we understand, no, no, no, that's not the case. They are actually learning throughout their lives. And as you say, it takes a lot of learning to become an intelligent species is this long juvenile period when adults are staying with young and maybe demonstrating behaviors that the young birds then pick up and learn from. Yeah. You can see that in orca pods and things like that, where they have multi-generational

pods and baby orcas who live with their grandmothers have significant benefits from learning from not just their parents and other adults, but from the grandmothers and the matriarchs of these pods. And of course, orcas are extremely intelligent, so that fits exactly what you're saying, that there's a wisdom that comes from being around other adults for a period of time. What exactly does an owl know, Jennifer? Well, that is the $60,000 question, but they know a great deal. I mean, obviously they're superbly adapted. They

know how to fit into their environments. They know how to hunt skillfully, but a lot of people ask me, well, how smart are they? You know, what in terms of that kind of knowledge? And the thing that I will say is that, you know, all birds are far more intelligent than we imagined. You know, their brains, they're organized in a different way from ours, but what matters in the intelligent brain is the density of neurons. And the brains of birds turn out to be very, very dense with neurons, so they're highly efficient. And the other thing I'll say is the science of understanding the minds of other animals,

it's really in its infancy. We're just beginning to understand it. We kind of see intelligence through our own lens. Yes. But there's a growing awareness, I think, that there are different kinds of intelligence and different ways of knowing in the animal world, in the owl world,

that may be hard for us to conceive of and certainly are hard for us to measure. So I think, you know, owls, they may not be smart in the same way that, you know, parrots and corvids are smart, the same ways that we're smart. It's kind of being able to solve technological problems. But they do have their own varieties of expertise, but they're just more subtle than some other kinds of birds and different from us. So, and they're very, they turn out to be very flexible in their behavior and nuanced. And as I said, they learn throughout their lives. All of those are signs of there's a lot going on upstairs that we just may not be very good at measuring it yet. So it's an open question and I think a fascinating one.

Absolutely. Yeah. What an owl knows. We are just now beginning to understand what they know. And you mentioned corvids and parrots who tend to be much more social birds and they can demonstrate their intelligence in ways that make sense to humans. Mimicking calls, learning to talk. I brought you this shiny thing. Oh, you liked it? I brought you this other thing. I'll come back tomorrow.

Oh, you left me a present? That's nice. This sort of social interaction. Corvids know how to play with each other. They engage in play for fun. It makes sense to the human mind. And so it seems easier for us to gauge exactly like, wow, these are really, really smart birds. But I love thinking about how there are types of intelligence that we're not even aware of. We're not even aware of

what types of intelligence animals have. And we're not even able of what types of intelligence animals have. And we're not even able to measure all of the different types of senses and the ways in which they use their senses and the ways in which that information is integrated into their brain. It's just, it's such a fascinating and emerging field of study. It really is. And I think it's one of the fascinating things is just understanding that we live in one reality and there's this very, very rich other kind of reality

that we're just beginning to scratch the surface of. And I think owls are a beautiful example of that. They really are. Have you read An Immense World by Ed Young? Yes. That's a great example of how animals literally live in a different universe than we do. Yeah, they have this, we see this little wedge of reality. And when I wrote a book called The Birdway about the way that birds see color, but they have the capacity to see ultraviolet light. And it's not just that they see light in a part of the spectrum that we can't see, it's that they actually see ultraviolet light. And it's not just that they see light in a part of the spectrum that we can't see, it's that they actually see ultraviolet light baked into all the colors they see. So they're just seeing this universe of color that we can't perceive. And

that's the tip of the iceberg, I think. And think about what an owl hears. We're just beginning to get a little window on that. One of the fascinating facts in the book that came from an anatomist who was studying the way that the owl's brain is wired, and he said, there's a part of the hearing nerve that goes to the visual part of the brain. So he said, maybe that means that owls actually see sound. So there may be like a mouse thrusting in the dark, kind of flashing at them in a visual way. Just such a fascinating mystery. And of course, your sensory organs are gathering information, but it's up to your brain to interpret what that information means. And we can study the sensory organs of all these animals, but how their brain interprets the information that the sensory organ has gathered is what is

so difficult to know and what is so fascinating to learn more about. And that's exactly the question. What does a bat know? What does an owl know? It's that, the question, what does a bat know? What does an owl know? It's that, as you say that, you know, what's going on in the brain with the information that they're taking in. And, you know, we take in all kinds of information that we're never aware of. So, you know, it all depends on what you're attending to and how the brain is sorting it out. Jennifer, this was so good. This was so interesting. I absolutely loved What an Owl Knows. I loved talking to you about it. We could probably talk for three more hours about like, well, this bird. Yeah, that's right. That bird does do that. Like we could probably

be here all day talking about birds and owls. I just loved it. Thank you for your work and thank you for being here. Oh, it was such a delight. Thank you so much for having me. You can buy Jennifer Ackerman's book, What an Owl Knows, wherever you buy your books. You can also order on bookshop.org if you want to support independent bookstores. You can follow Jennifer on social media at Jennifer Ackerman Author, and also visit her website, jenniferackermanauthor.com. Thanks so much for joining us. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Sharon McMahon. Our audio producer is Jenny Snyder. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And if you could

leave us a review or share this episode on social media, Those things help podcasters out so much. Thanks for being here today.