Stuff You Should Know - How Owls Work

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

It’s time for another great animal episode and in this one we swoop into the world of owls – nature’s greatest silent predator who (hooo) also look very cute and intelligent. Not to mention they can turn their heads 270 degrees.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's helicoptering around or perched nearby. All that will make sense in a little bit

and this is Stuff You Should Know. Bird to pray a dish. Yeah, raptors. And one of my favorite birds a dish. Yeah, mine too. Love me some owls. We get very excited here at the Cine Bryant House whenever we get to see some owl action in the backyard. We have some woods in a creek behind our house and for a while there it seemed like they might have been nesting. We were getting a lot of visitors but had one in the driveway one time on a branch that we went out and looked at and it did that deal where it's facing another way and hooty-hoot at it and it turns his little head around. Like the exorcist. Looked right at us and Emily went whoa and Ruby was excited and we hear him at the camp having,

I don't know if they're having sex or if those are mating calls but some of the crazy sounds they make. Man, they really do. It's really interesting. Yeah, I was looking up all the different owl calls and they are just magnificent and they're so varied. There's just so many different calls. They sound so dissimilar. It's really cool. There's one owl that sounds like a winning horse. Yeah. It's my favorite. I think it's the Eastern Screech Owl. It sounds like a tiny little horse is winning. It's one of the best bird calls I've ever heard. 10 out of 10. Would recommend? Yes, for sure. I think the ones that we hear are the crazy sounds. I think they're just regular not the barred owls but the great horned. Is that right? I think those are

the ones that most people think of when they think of an owl. But I think they're just sexy calls like mating calls but they sound like howler monkeys almost. They do not sound like owls. That's really crazy. Yeah, totally. Anyway, I love owls the end. I love owls too and we're going to talk all about owls including how they turn their heads all the way around which is pretty cool. But one of the things that you hit upon right out of the gate, Chuck, was that owls are raptors or birds of prey. So that would put them in league with hawks and eagles and that kind of thing. But they're a lot different from hawks and eagles. Not just in their looks and appearances but in their biology and the way that they hunt, the way that they eat. They're actually definitely

their own thing. Yeah, they're a lot stockier. I actually didn't look up wingspan but to me, it's always signature owl when you really notice something out of the corner of your eye. I'm always like, oh wait, that has to be an owl because their wingspan is much more impressive than the hawks and the falcons around here. Yeah, for sure. And they have big old heads, of course, and little shorty tails. The toe is kind of a pretty cool feature, don't you think? Yeah, it goes either forward or backward, I guess, depending on the owl's mood. There's another thing that's like so quintessentially owl in that it has big eyes, not beady little eyes like your hawks or your eagles, but like big, almost human-like eyes perfectly round in the middle of their head,

not on the side of their head, but front-facing eyes. So they have really amazing binocular vision and they have probably the best night vision of any animal out there, even better than cats, they say. Yeah, and one of the ways, this is something I wasn't sure about because sometimes you see the owl with the black eyes that are, you know, I love my owls, but those are a little intimidating looking, any animal with jet black eyes. And then the regular eyes where you can see color and pupils and stuff, and apparently they are the strictly nocturnal ones are the ones with the black eyes. Okay. And that's how you can tell, and it's not like it doesn't help them in hunting other than they're black to aid in their camouflage, so they can literally just be as

dark as the night around them in every part of their body. I always took it as their eyes were black because they were saturated with all the souls that they captured over the years. I think that's probably true too. So owls have been around for a little while, Chuck, and they're actually super, because they've been around, I think the oldest owl fossil that we found is like up to 55 million years old. And because they've been around so long, they were living on Earth at a time when the continents were in a totally different configuration than they are today. And so owls are like widespread. They're on every single continent except Antarctica. Of course. And they live in all sorts of different habitats, as we'll find out.

There's, I think, 250 species total. And because they live in all these different places, but they're all still owls, they do slightly different things. They've evolved somewhat differently, which is, I just, I think it makes owls even neater, frankly. Yeah. And, you know, what's the little guy, the elf? Yeah, the elf owl. Those are super cute. Those are the tiniest ones. And owls can get quite large, though, but it's a different kind of big. They've got that girth, because they're short and stubby still. And in Georgia, I looked up, we have, I think, eight different kinds of owls that you might see, but mainly the great horned. And occasionally, if you're really lucky, you'll

see a barn owl. And those white ones. Yeah, those cool white faces. We got some screech owls and some burrowers here and there. But mainly, you're going to see the great horned or the barred or the barn. Yes. The barred ones are pretty great, too. Those are the ones that look like real tree camouflage and like browns and grays. Yeah, very handsome. They look very much like the great horned owl, except they don't have those tufts. You know? Yeah. Is that what the horns are? Yeah. It's just tufts of feathers that makes it look horned. Yeah. They look like ears, but they're not ears. No, they don't. And they're actually, they have nothing to do with hearing from what I saw. They're actually, I think they use them to communicate to other owls non-verbally,

like look out behind you or something. Right. Okay. And then they also can move them in different positions. So it breaks up the shape of the owl and lets them camouflage in with branches among the trees more easily. Oh, that makes sense. I mean, they are as cool as they are. They are like evolutionarily perfect killing machines, basically, is what owls are. But they're also super chill, too. Yeah. I mean, you talked about the camouflage. It is pretty funny now that I think about it. For being such a sort of large squat object, they can be really hard to find, like in your backyard when you're like, I hear it and he's very close to me or, you know, and then finally your eyes adjust and you go, okay, there she is right there. Yeah, exactly. A very adaptable

camouflage. Well, not adapt. It doesn't change. For sure. Like an octopus, but you know what I mean. That would be amazing. They've adapted well. So you mentioned barn owls. They're actually a different family of owl. So all owls are grouped into the strige forms. That's how I'm saying it. And then the strige forms are subdivided into these two families. Titanidae. I added an extra syllable. Titanidae. Yeah. Yeah, okay, I got it. Those are all the barn owls. It's about 17 species. And then all the other approximately rest of the 250 species are strigidae, which are true owls. And the way that they typically differentiate them, Chuck, is that barn owls have the heart-shaped face. True owls have more of a rounded disc face. Yeah. I think the barn owls have a little bit

longer legs, but they're, you know, they're fairly similar in size, depending on the species, unless you get, you know, some crazy outlier like the elf owl. Sure, which are ridiculously cute. They're like, I don't know if they're the same size or the same weight of a golf ball. Oh, man. I know. It's got to be weight. I think so. Golf balls, tiny. So I think the most familiar owls in North America and Europe are the true owls, right? But barn owls are found everywhere in the world, basically. Yeah, but I think they're obviously, because they're more groupings, they're more true owls. Right. And we were talking about the hooting. And it's funny, I've seen, I saw this in multiple places, this thing that you found, like when you hear a barred owl hooting, the who cooks for you

and who cooks for you all. And I didn't get that until I watched the videos and paired it with what they were saying. And I kind of get it now. But I would argue that it's who cooks for y'all. Yeah. Because it's still four, still four hoots. Yeah. Not five hoots. Yeah, yeah, you're right. I couldn't put my finger on it. I'm like, that's not quite it. Yeah. Here, let me, let me try my best attempt. Wow. That's pretty close to the barred owl. Yeah. And I added the y'all in there for you. So yeah, I think that's pretty good. Yeah. I thought I did a pretty good owl, but that puts me to shame. So barn owls, so they're these little weirdos. They're their own family. They have heart-shaped

faces and they also hiss. That's like the call that they make is a hissing sound. They're total weirdos, as we'll see. They're really cool looking and very interesting owls, but they're strange in their own way for sure. Yeah. And then you got, like you said, that screech owl that winnies, the saw-wet owl has sort of a, they liken it to a file being scraped across saw teeth. I don't get that at all. I didn't get that at all, but it is kind of a high tone. And it does sound different than a lot of owls, but I just encourage, if you've got 10 minutes in your life, just sit around and listen to some owl calls. It's a good time. There's actually like hour and a half long YouTube videos or that like

nighttime owl calls to calm you down. And it's great. Like if you've run out of stuff, you should know episodes and you have to say, maybe you turn to something like that. I think we should talk about their head turn though, the Exorcist move, because when you see one and they turn it to look directly, those black eyes directly into your face, I don't care how much you love an owl, it is very, a very chilling sensation that comes up for you. Yeah. It just is. It's because the owls are regarding you. They're not even looking at you. They're like sizing you up, you can tell, you know? Yeah. Maybe that's it. It's like, are you food? Sort of look. I almost take it as more like, are you even worthy to be in the same area

as any kind of thing? You know what I'm saying? A little hockey? A little bit. A little bit. Yeah. But they, I mean, but they deserve to do that, I think owls can back that up. They're that cool. Yeah. Well, they use that, like you said, because their eyes are on the front of their face, so they have to turn their head to be able to see because they're very focused, very, you know, long range binocular vision. It's some really good vision, but their eyeballs just don't move around. They can't move their eyeballs at all. Right. They have actually what are called eye tubes. We have like eyeballs that can move around. They're just tubes are fixed in their head. And yeah, so they have to turn their whole head. And the way that they turn their whole head,

270 degrees, it's three quarters of a full circle. That's really impressive. I mean, you try that. Don't try that, actually. You might seriously injure yourself. Yeah. But so an owl can turn their head that well because they actually have a mechanism where blood is constantly pooling in this little collection area so that when they turn their head toward, after a certain point, they cut off the circulation to their eyes and brains. So they would not be able to get any blood any longer to those very vital organs. Were it not for that collection of blood that's pooled up, that's pumping it into their eye and brain while their head is turned around to that degree. Amazing. I think that's the fact of the show. Yeah, I'll back that up.

You got something better? I don't know. Owl that sounds like a small, winning horse. Pretty impressive too, you know. They also can have asymmetrical ears, meaning their ears can be at different heights on their own head, which is really cool. And that just basically is a more efficient hearing system. They have really great hearing as well. They can hear like a mouse under two feet of snow moving around. Yeah, and they can really triangulate because the difference in the arrival time for a sound between one ear and the other since their offset can help them pinpoint exactly where that prey is. And because their hearing is so amazing, they can hear under dirt, snow, leaves,

wherever the poor little mouse is trying to hide, the owl can actually hear it moving around in there, probably breathing really nervous because it knows an owl is out there. And one of the other ways that they can hear so well, Chuck, is because of their face too, right? Yeah, and this is super cool. If you've ever seen an owl, I mean the owl cab feels like sort of flat faces, but some of them almost look concave in the way their face is really flat and then the feathers around their face kind of come out to form a little bowl almost. And that is an evolutionary trait. It basically turns their face into an ear in a certain way. Yeah, almost like an antenna. Yeah, one of them discs you hold up at a football game.

Satellite dish. Sure. What do you hold up at a football game? Well, you know, the microphone people at sporting events, they have a microphone inside a big dish so it catches the sound. I thought you were talking about fans for some reason and my brain was like, I can't bring any image of what Chuck's talking about up right now. Yeah, there's a word for it too. I know what you mean. You know, you pointed at something far away and it helps collect the sound. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Like an earhorn.

Sure, like owl face is probably what they call it. Like an owl face. I think that's what they call it in the industry. Sure. Should we take a break? Oh, Jinx, Chuck. Jinx, the spirit of the owl is with us. All right, we'll be right back after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing.

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or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird.

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Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So you put this thing together with the help of some great websites on Al's. And yeah, including our friends, how stuff works. Oh, yeah. They have a good one on Al's. They had some on Al's flying silently.

But also, Mental Floss had a really good article. Audubon, fizz.org, Al Research Institute, and Owling.com. And Mr. Skin. Oh, wait. So what you found on most of those websites is that Al's just have a few basic needs to live and thrive. And that, of course, is food. And we'll talk about how they hunt in all that stuff coming up here soon.

They got to have some place to roost. And as we'll see, Al's are house thieves. They steal nests and burrows. They don't like building houses and nests. So they tend to steal them. And then they need a place to nest. Like roosting and nesting, near food is a big component of being an owl. And near food can mean a lot of different places depending on where you are in the world.

Yeah. And the difference between a roost and a nest is a roost is where they sleep for the night or the day actually is more like it. And then the nest is where they have their babies and rear their little owlets or what they're called. And because that's all they really need, you can find that just about everywhere in the world. And that's one of the reasons why Owls have been so successful almost everywhere on the world. In addition to the fact that they're night hunting maniacs. And so you can find them in Sub-Saharan Africa and the tropics in Hawaii. And the habitats that they live in are also just all over the place like wetlands, marshlands,

the arctic tundra, the snowy owl, which fans of Harry Potter are familiar with, Hedwig, the owl, he was, I'm sorry, she was a snowy owl. And they hunt in the arctic and live in the arctic. Forests of any kind, deserts, that little elf owl that you're so fond of, understandably so. They live in the desert, right? Yeah, they eat a lot of insects, a lot of spiders. They even eat scorpions, the occasional small reptile if it's small enough. And where are you going to find that?

In the desert. Yeah. And then they also live in the cacti that you find in the desert. They live in little hollowed out holes of the, how do you say that, saguaro cacti? That sounds good. The big famous, you know, like anytime Bugs Bunny's walking through the desert. Exactly. That's the saguaro as far as I know. And elf owls live in hollows in the saguaro cacti. Yeah. I think I've drawn a picture of an owl inside a hole, a cactus hole.

Really? Yeah. Was that when you were living in Yuma? No, but you know, sometimes when you have a kid, you sit around and draw things with them. And like one of my go-tos as a kid was a desert scene because the cactus is pretty fun to draw. And anytime I drew a cactus, I would draw a little hole with a little owl face. Really? Yeah. And I have one here at the house from the past two years

that I will take a picture of and put it on my Instagram. And maybe even on the stuff you should know Instagram actually. I think that's a great idea. The thing is, the reason I'm like, wow, really impressed is because I had no idea that owls, first of all, lived in the desert, but secondly nested in cacti until I started researching this. So I'm very impressed. I always did that though. And I always, anytime I drew like a big oak, I would draw a hole with like a squirrel face.

Well, that one makes sense. I knew that. Yeah. I was just a dumb kid. I don't know how I knew about owls and cactus, but... I'm impressed. The great horned owl, because they're so huge and embossed, they hunt just about everywhere.

And then there's burrowing owls, which are almost like the roadrunners of owls. And, you know, squirrels, prairie dogs, sometimes turtle burrows. The owls will be like, hey, you're not using this anymore. I'm going to take it over. Thank you. There is one kind of owl that burrows its own burrows, the Florida burrowing owl. But that's from what I saw, basically, the only kind that actually creates its own burrows. But yeah, they also barn owls, obviously roost and barns.

A lot of owls are totally fine in the suburbs or the city or in parks. I mean, it's not like you exactly live out in the country, and you've got owls in your backyard, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And one thing you were talking about roadrunners, a very fun thing to do, if you ever have a few minutes, is just Google or a website search engine of your choice, running owl, and just look at these pictures of owls running on the ground. A lot of times they're little babies, which you'll see, you know,

sometimes where they can fly, they run. But it's my understanding, that's one of the reasons, maybe the only reason they can turn that one talent around, is if they're not, you know, they don't need it to grasp on something, they can turn it around to run. And just this image of a barn, of little baby barn running, it looks like a person in a little fuzzy suit. Yeah, because they stand up, the barn owls in particular,

stand up pretty straight and erect, like people. And there was actually a viral video that a lot of dummies on the internet were like, these are aliens, where somebody had gone into their barn, imagine that. And found two baby barn owls that were just standing there staring back at the camera. Wow. And people were like, it's obviously alien. It's a pretty famous video, actually, it's worth looking up.

I've probably seen it. As far as their behavior, you did mention sleeping at night, a lot of it, not all of them, but a lot of owls are nocturnal. That's the reason you're going to hear those hooty hoots in the evening time, kind of when the sun's at that dusky time, when the sun's going down. I'm sorry, I have to ask, are you making outcast references when you say that? Say what? Hooty hoots? No.

Oh, OK. I wish I was. I love outcasts. Well, let's just say you were there. OK, sure. Great. I was trying to make another outcast joke, but then I was just pushing it too far. They're our hometown guys.

We love outcasts. Oh, for sure. Or sometimes in the middle of the night, I've been, like I said, woken up at the camp to some crazy owl activity that's always fun to hear, to know they're nearby hunting and doing their thing. But they're not all nocturnal. Some are diurnal. Some are crepuscular.

That means they're active during dusk and dawn only. I love hate that word. Crepuscular. It does sound kind of gross in a way, doesn't it? Yeah, for sure. Crepuscular. There's a pus in the middle of it. Right.

Yeah, it does sound kind of dirty. Yeah, and it doesn't even fit. Like you would never, if you had no idea what crepuscular meant, you would never intuitively be able to come up with that. Well, because it doesn't sound like the other two. You've got nocturnal, diurnal, and then crepuscular. They really ran out of ideas at the word factory. Yeah, that's very strange.

But very efficient hunters at night, they fly almost completely silently. An owl can really sneak up on a small rodent. Yeah. And, you know, they know the owls are around, so it's not like they're out there listening for the owls as well, but the owl has really adapted to swoop down there in near silence and get a squirrel or a rabbit, a snake, another owl. They will hunt each other.

Yeah. They're really kind of heartless hunters. The one thing I don't like about owls, that they predate on other owl species sometimes. I know. Do you want to talk about how they fly silently now? Because I think it's a pretty good spot for it. Let's do it.

Take it away. So they're really well known for that. Like, I've never seen an owl fly in person, but it must just be absolutely eerie to see something flying past you and not making a sound. And the reason that they do that is because their wings and their feathers are basically made to muffle and break up sound. Like the leading edge, first of all, their wings are really broad. So they can soar more easily without flapping.

So just by virtue of not flapping as much, they're making less noise. And then the leading edge of their wings are serrated, kind of comb-like. And that takes turbulence. Turbulence is that air hitting the wing and going over the top of the wing, which makes a lot of noise. Anyone who's ever ridden an airplane can tell you that. But because it's serrated, it breaks that turbulence up into much smaller, more manageable micro-turbulences.

And then it takes those micro-turbulences and passes them through the feathers, which further dampens everything, right? That's right. They have those other saw feathers, I guess, sort of underneath. Is that the way to describe it? I think in the trailing end behind them. So yeah, depending on where the owl is standing up with its wings spread, it'd be the bottom. If it's flying, it'd be the rear.

Okay. And they also can shift that sound energy away. And I think they, it's basically, it's a sound, but it's a higher frequency. So the prey can't hear it, and presumably humans can't. Right. And then their secondary feathers kind of do the same thing too, right? They're all working in concert. Whatever turbulence has made it through the feathers or over the feathers, the, like the fact that owl feathers on the bottom or rear edge are tufted,

there's kind of, you know, tufted, it's the best way to put it. They actually break the turbulence up further. And they also, there's down behind them. And the down absorbs any remaining sound. So like their wings just, they don't, they don't allow the owl to make sound as it's flying through the air. Yeah. And it's, like you said, it's a big, broad, wide wingspan motion. So when something that large is moving, but it's quiet, it can be a little creepy.

Yeah. I can imagine. And one of the things that also makes owls so incredibly amazing is that when they eat those rabbits or birds or squirrels, they, other birds of prey, other raptors will kill them usually with talons. And owl's talons are amazingly strong, especially the great horned owl. Supposedly it can exert as much force with its talons as the humans can, maximally with our bite. That's pretty amazing. But they don't actually kill the prey with the talons from what I saw.

They use their beak to basically kill the prey after capturing it. And then what they do after that is even more amazing, if you ask me, Chuck. Yeah. They, they swallow, if they can, if it's too big, they have to tear it into pieces. But if they can manage it, they swallow it whole. And whatever they swallow, say it's a mouse. That little mouse goes to a temporary digestive organ called the probantriculus. And then it goes to the gizzard. And then from there, it, you know, the gizzard digest whatever it can digest.

And then whatever it can't digest, like, oh, I don't know, bones, let's say. Or fur or other feathers or whatever. It sort of just chills out down there for, you know, up to 10 hours. Like their digestive system is blocked for 10 hours while this is happening. Wow. And it just, you know, sort of squeezes it into a regurgitatable, what they call a pellet, an alpellet. Yeah.

If you've ever heard of alpellets, it's not poop or anything. They just hack back up like a bony hairball, almost, of what they last ate. Right. What they couldn't digest and absorb. It's pretty cool. I think bony hairball could be, it's like if weird owl would have had a band at the beginning of this career instead of just being a solo act, it probably would have been bony hairball. That's the only person who could have pulled that off, too. I think so. So yeah, it's pretty amazing that owls just puke their undigestible parts of their food back up in a nice, efficient pellet.

And when they catch food, if the hunting's like really, really good, they might not eat it immediately. They'll do what I remember alligators do, they'll basically go hide it, they stash it for a little while. Yeah. And I think alligators did it to let the thing actually decay some so that they could pull it apart more easily. I get the impression owls aren't really doing that for that reason. They're just, there's just such an embarrassment of riches as far as the hunting goes. Right. They're stashing it away for a day or two and then coming back and eating it later.

I think I've seen owl pellets in the woods and didn't know what they were. Did you pick it up and rub it between your fingers and sniff it and say, I don't know what this is? No, but I think there are times when I've seen a thing and I thought, Jesus, is that a dead mouse? It sure looks like it could be, but it's not shaped like one. It's got a giant thigh bone sticking out of it. I bet you anything those are owl pellets. Yeah, but you're right. I'm going to be on the lookout now.

Yeah, and if you see a bunch of them together, there are probably several owls nearby because that means it's really good hunting ground and owls tend to stay near hunting ground. So if you see a bunch of owl pellets, there's a bunch of owls around you and you just probably look up and look closely and you'll see some. That's right. And as far as their hunting goes, there's a few different methods. Some are a little lazier than others. I think I would be a perch and pounce guy and that's exactly what it sounds like. They kind of hang out on their perch, do their thing. They look around with those eye tubes and when they see something and only when they see something, are they going to swoop down very silently and snatch it up?

Yes, works pretty well. There's also quartering flight, which is, I guess, middling as far as exerting yourself goes. The owl just basically flies around and looks for prey down below and like we said, they have amazing binocular vision. So they'll see something eventually and then again, they swoop down and there goes the prey. And then there's a third called helicoptering, which I think I mentioned at the very beginning of the episode. Jerry's. Yeah, that's right. And that is the far and away, the hardest way for them to hunt because they just basically hover over an area until they can locate the prey and then they swoop down and pounce.

And who knows how long they're going to have to helicopter. I actually couldn't find a video check. I looked really hard, but you know how when something happens, the internet basically pushes everything else out in favor of that one thing? Well, there is apparently a firefighting helicopter, I think in California once, that was flying in the air and an owl flew in and just perched itself inside the helicopter. Wow. So if you search owl helicoptering, that's all that comes up. I have seen birds of prey do this at the lake where they're circling above looking for fish. And then they will stop in place and helicopter for a moment.

And that's when you know that they've locked in on something. And I mean, that's amazing too, how a hawk can see a fish in the water 100 feet below them. Yeah. And then they dive and then grab the fish. And I always, I don't laugh, but I always sort of joke about like what that must be like for the fish to be just swimming along underwater. And seconds later, be flying 100 feet above the lake with, you know, being gripped by talents. Can you imagine what that does to your day? I know.

I've thought about that many times and you're right, it is hard not to laugh at it because it's just so nuts. They're probably just like, oh my God. Yeah, but at the same time, it's like, okay, they're about to die, but they're being taken on the most thrilling experience of their entire life. At least they get to go out like that. But yeah, it's really, it's sad to see like a fish just flipping back and forth, not like furiously. It's more just like kind of anxiously flipping back and forth, like what's going on? Almost like if it were a person, it would be, it's the equivalent of a person like sitting in a corner with their knees up to their chest rocking back and forth. That's the motion that those fish make when they're in the talons.

Yeah. And I've also seen them drop said fish and swoop down and grab it out of the air, which is also very impressive. Oh, wow. That's just playing with your food. Really quite a show. Wow. But the owl, back to the owls, they, like you said, they do have those sharp talons and they spend, you know, they spend a lot of their time hunting. It's when they're not hunting, they're generally resting or, you know, roosting, which is resting.

Sure. Sometimes at the time they'll roost alone, but sometimes they share space. Owls, you know, they can kind of mix it up a little bit. They're generally loners, but they can also hang out around other owls, especially in like breeding season. They may hang around a little more near other owls. Yeah. It's called a communal roost. And there are some advantages.

Like you said, during breeding season, it's easier to find a mate. Sure. It's cold out, it's much easier to stay warm in a small little area with a bunch of other owls. They apparently will trade information about hunting grounds nearby. And I don't know how they do that. I didn't see how, but I thought that was pretty awesome. And then also they, like the more owls there are, the less likely the owls are to be mobbed by other birds. Yeah.

And that's the thing, it didn't surprise me it happened to owls because I've also seen this at the lake with hawks and falcons. When you see one of them coming up on a nest, like looking for some eggs or baby birds, they will be attacked by tiny little birds. It's so great to see. They will just come after them basically and just say, there's a lot of us, we can fly in a lot like quicker zigzaggy patterns. And they just, they kind of swarm them and intimidate and confuse and just try and drive them away basically. Yeah. They're like, huh, you like being harassed? Yeah.

I'm not touching you. It's pretty cool to see because you know, these big giant birds of prey, it's kind of interesting that they can be thwarted by, you know, a gang of tenacious little birds. It is. It's just so heartwarming to see that because it's, I don't think I've ever seen it unsuccessful, have you? Like it always works. No, it seems like they're always like, all right, fine, I'm out of here. Yeah, very sure. Well, if you're going to be like that about me eating your children.

I'm going to take a fish on the right of his life. Right. You want to take our second break and come back and talk about making new owls? Sure. I thought you were going to say making love, but same thing. Yeah. Okay, I see what you're doing. You've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep.

We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Mangesha Tickler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, it's time to talk about owl lovemaking. And one of the things that you are hearing, like you said in the woods when you're hearing a bunch of crazy owl calls,

are owls trying to attract a mate. Basically that and defense are the two reasons that they call from what we can tell. And males will sit there and call through the woods because of the frequency of their calls. It's really easy for it to just travel right through vegetation so it can travel really long distances. And then females of that same species will listen out and return the call to males of her species. And they might get something going from that point on. Yeah, and like a lot of animals, the males can do a very elaborate sort of courting dance. It's what you might think. A lot of flapping, a lot of sort of chest beating, a lot of diving and climbing.

And hey, look at me. I can do all this stuff. They call it a sky dance. And then eventually that male will wind up in the grasses on the ground and just say, what do you think ladies? My good friend, Mike Torino, made this incredible video where he record, I don't know if you recorded or got recordings of owl mating calls. I guess he knew he had a Randy owl in his backyard. And he put this speaker on his deck and he's a cameraman in the film business. So I'm not sure what he shot it with, but he had a slow motion camera rig going.

And he got a owl diving onto the speaker in slow motion on his deck. Wow. And it's one of the most incredible cool shots I've ever seen. And he was like, yeah, it's just like one afternoon. And he made it happen. It's very, very cool. Is it on the internet? I mean, he put it on his Facebook years ago, but I'll have to, I'll text it and get it and send it to you for your eyes only.

Oh, okay. Got it. Thanks, man. Or maybe he'll give you permission to put on the stuff you should know, Instagram or something. Yeah. One of the things that I thought was really cool is if that owl had been able to mate with your friend's speaker, they would have stayed together potentially for life. Oh, Bose, I love you so. Right.

At the very least, the male owl would have stuck around for a year throughout the breeding cycle at the very least. They help raise the eggs and then later on the hatchlings and the nestlings, which is pretty cool, I think. It is cool. And those mothers might lay, I mean, average five or six eggs, but they could lay up to 10 or 11 eggs over a few days. And it really kind of depends on if they think it's a successful area. There's a lot of food around.

They think these little owlets might survive that then they will have more eggs, which is pretty remarkable in itself. And she stays with those eggs until they hatch. It takes about 24 to 32 days and doesn't leave the male. It's kind of sweet. Go gets food and brings it back to the mom so she can eat. Although she does lose a little bit of weight because she's probably not eating like she usually does. Right.

And then one of my favorite words in nature, the egg tooth, is how the little baby owlets crack themselves out. Yeah. And then there, I guess, little fledglings at that point, right? Yeah, there was one other thing before they hatch that I thought was cool. The mom loses the feathers on her belly so that she can transfer heat from her body to the eggs more efficiently, which I thought was really cool. So sweet.

So I'm sure she loses weight because she's generating so much heat, like her metabolism must just go through the roof. That makes sense. So yeah, so the little owlets hatch and depending on the species, they are super duper cute or else they are horrific. Right. The barn owls in particular are horrifying to look at for the first several days before they get feathers. Any baby bird without feathers is not really pleasant to see,

but the barn owls in particular are really rough. But then once they start to get those fluffy little downy feathers there, they begin to be adorable. But for the first like at least couple of weeks, they are totally helpless, eyes closed. They can't fend for themselves in any way. They can't fly. And then more to the point, they can't thermoregulate.

So they can't keep themselves warm. They're still totally dependent on their mom to keep them warm and keep them from freezing to death. And then finally, once they cross that threshold where they can thermoregulate on their own, they start to like literally branch out from the nest. Yeah. And this, it didn't take too long. It's about a week, right? Or a little under?

Couple. Couple weeks. Okay. So eventually those eyes will open and those little white downy feathers become a little more gray and brown and functional, most importantly. But yeah, they'll do two things. They will, some of them will go nest on the ground. But the ones who, the nestlings who stay in the trees, they will just literally go to a branch that's nearby and they'll hang out and they wait to fly.

The ones on the ground kind of cover themselves up in the grasses and stuff until they can fly, because they're very, obviously very vulnerable at this point. Yeah, right. And I imagine any other bird of prey that's sort of wide open for them, right? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But because of this, if you find an owl or owllet, I should say, on the ground, don't take it home because it hasn't been abandoned. It's probably out exploring.

Right. Or to the vet or something. Doing branching. Yeah. Not only leave it, if you can, put it in like either a low branch or somewhere on a shrub and the mom will come back for it because I know we've talked about this before somewhere, but handling a bird doesn't cause the mother bird to abandon it. It's an old wives' tale. Yeah, just leave the bird there, you know, or put it in a little branch or something and it will be taken care of from that point on.

Yeah, I mean, my advice is always to just let it alone. But if it looks like it's in harm's way, or if you just can't resist picking up the baby owllet and say, I'm going to move it because it's not safe, wink, wink. And then just get a little, little, scratch, scratch of those downy feathers. Just don't do it for long. Right. And try and leave it alone. Resist the urge.

Maybe just long enough to go, I love you so much. What if the owl said, I love you too? There's one other cool thing about baby owls too, right? Because of the size of their heads? I don't know. Oh, okay. They're cute. They are cute.

Here's another rival for fact of the podcast, Chuck. Okay. Because baby owl heads are so big disproportionately to their body, they don't sleep sitting up. They sleep laying down on their bellies and they look a lot like little baby puppies sleeping. And some of them will actually, I've seen a picture of a baby owl spluting. Like on its belly, spread eagle on the ground. It's really, really cute to see. You call that a splute?

Yeah. Okay. What do you call it? I don't know because it's funny when dogs do it. What do I call that? I don't know what we call it. I'll have to ask Emily and I think we've got a word for it. Okay.

Well, let us know, report back because splutes what I've always gone with. Yeah. Well, Emily family has her own name for that stuff, right? Sure. Are you saying that splute is like a scientific term? I don't know if it's scientific, but I feel like it's widespread. I don't think Yumi coined it or anything like that. Oh, you never know.

Yumi's quite clever. She is pretty clever. She's a words method. Stuff she says spreads on the internet like wildfire. I believe it. All right. So let's hear, that's the email I want is what do you call an animal? And you know what we're talking about?

Like a froggy, like frog's legs spread on the ground. Yep. All right. So humans, like we said, we love owls. It seems like humans have always been fascinated. They're very famous. Was it the Chauvet Cave in France? With all those amazing cave paintings from 20,000 years ago, there is very distinctly

an owl drawn. And you know, whether it's ancient Greece, it's just people have always been fascinated with owls, I think. One reason is there can be very useful. Like if you're a farmer, you want owls around, you know, for pest control. Yeah. Apparently a single barn owl will eat 50 pounds of gophers in a year. That's a lot of gophers.

A lot of gophers for meat. Because a gopher doesn't weigh a pound. That's a ton of gophers. And then a single barn owl family will eat about 3,000 rodents in a four month breeding cycle. Wow. Not only is that like natural and, you know, circle of life kind of stuff. The farmer can feel good about that.

They'll also save on poison, which is a problem not just for the rodents that the farmers poison, but for the owls that eat the poison rodents. There's a lot of owls that have died incidentally because farmers have used poison bait on their rodents to try to control rodents. If you've got owls, you don't have to worry about rodents. So farmers heart owls. That's right. And owls and humans generally heart each other.

But I did, you know, back when I was on social media years ago, I remember seeing more than one neighborhood boast about joggers being attacked by owls in the neighborhood. And so I looked it up today and it definitely happens on the reg. They say if you're out for an early morning jog, maybe don't have a ponytail flopping. Like your hair up in a hat because people, there are a lot of reports. No one's ever been like, you know, you might get a little scratched up. So it's not like a fatal thing or anything like that. And you probably won't even get injured.

But those owls are big and to have one scratching at your head briefly even is probably pretty scary. Yeah. For sure. Those crepuscular owls sound like they're trouble. But what's the deal with the wisdom in the owls? Because that's the thing since I was a little kid. You always associated owls with having the little graduation cap on.

Right. Exactly. Like the one from the Tussiro Pop commercials or owl from Winnie the Pooh. So there's two schools of thought and they're not necessarily even mutually exclusive. But one is that the archaic Greeks about 3,000 years ago are the first ones to attribute wisdom to owls by pairing them with Athena, who was one of Zeus's daughters and a goddess of wisdom. And her favorite companion was an owl.

So that some people say, there you go. That's it. Other people say, actually, I wonder if people just looked at owls and saw their giant eyes that make them look very intelligent and said that is a very intelligent animal. And maybe that's actually what gave birth to pairing Athena with the owl in the first place. Who knows? Yeah.

I mean, if you've looked at an owl in the face, it feels like they are deep thinkers at the very least. But owls, as far as birds go, are medium smart? Is that fair? Sure. Yeah. I'd say. Not super intelligent, not the dumbest.

B minus students, maybe. Sure. They're like, they're like, I was, I was a B student, I would say. Oh yeah. Good for you. Where were you? B minus? I was seized a lot of times.

Really? Yeah. Not until I got to college did I really start excelling. Yeah. I made A's and B's in high school generally. Oh, wow. Man. Yeah.

I looked up to people like you. No, you didn't. You didn't like people. Yes, I did. Oh yeah? I would just, yeah. I would kind of like hang back and watch you from afar creepily in the library during lunch.

Was that you? Yeah. All right. Never knew that was you. That was totally me. Yeah, we've known each other for way longer than you realize. That's very creepy. It's not just the archaic Greeks and us alive today that said owls are very wise or there's

something about owls. There's tons of superstitions around the world. In fact, the Romans said an owl foreshadowed the death of Julius Caesar very famously. Sure. I didn't see how. Maybe it flew into the Senate or it said like Caesar look or something. But it's very much associated with the death of Caesar. Yeah.

I think a lot of different cultures have different owl sort of folklore. Like if an owl visits you in a dream, like this might happen. I think different cultures think different things about owls. But I think it's usually like bad luck, right? Yeah. It depends. The Hindu culture says that the owl has something to do with Lakshmi, the goddess. And so the owl is a symbol of luck.

But you know, like Apaches said that if you dream of an owl, you're probably going to die. Right. Yeah. It's kind of all over the place. And it makes sense that so many different cultures would have owl superstitions because they've been around for so long and they're spread all over the world. So so many cultures have interacted with owls and just fallen under their spell.

I love it. Count me as one. Me too. I got one other thing, Chuck. There are owl cafes in Japan and you can go to them and hang out with owls and I've done that. You mean I did that in Tokyo? And it's one of the coolest things I've ever done.

And upon researching this, I found that you are not supposed to do that. Oh really? Is it like riding an elephant? Kind of been in a different way. Like owls are super sociable, they're totally chill with humans, they're not scared or anything like that and they're generally treated well. But most owl species are nocturnal and you're going to the owl cafe during the day in most cases.

Gotcha. So they're forcing the owls to, you're making the owl stay awake when it otherwise would normally be sleeping and that's not good for anybody. Gotcha. So I'm sorry to all the owls, I just wanted to confess that. Oh, it's very big of you. Thank you. Well, since Chuck said that's very big of me, I say it's time for a listener mail.

I'm going to call this correction on the vasectomies up and a pretty important one. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you're doing this. I know we got this right on the condom episode, but here we go. Hey guys, in the episode you compared vasectomies to other birth control and although vasectomies are amazingly effective, I think your statement underestimates the effectiveness of other birth control methods. You talked about condoms as 85% effective, meaning there's a 15% chance of getting pregnant every time you use a condom, however, birth control effectiveness is calculated

by likelihood getting pregnant over a year using only that method, if there was really a 15% chance of getting pregnant every time you used a condom, the compounded chance of getting pregnant over one year would be almost 100%. I guess that's if you're living your best life. Such a huge fan of the podcast, as a recently graduated bioengineer, I couldn't pass up this opportunity to share the knowledge of probability in science on an issue I deeply care about. Thanks for all the amazing shows over the years, that is from Mina, and we heard from

a lot of people on this and I know that was just sort of a, what I call a verbal typo because we know that condoms are, it's more like, it's like 99% effective, right? I was totally seduced by that stat, so I bought it fully, I'm not even going to play. That's okay. Yeah. We have a whole episode on condoms where we get it right. Yeah, I wonder how many people are like, I'm not using those things anymore because over the course of a year, there's almost 100% chance of becoming pregnant.

Oh, I don't know about that. Well thanks a lot Mina and everybody else who wrote in, that was a really important one and Chuck, I'm glad you chose that one for a listener mail, and if you want to be like Mina and tell us something very important, we love that kind of stuff, you can send it to us in an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Today I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. And the Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas

are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.