Blakiston’s Fish Owl skeleton on display at the Shiretoko Rausu Visitor Center in Japan

From International Owl Center

Happy Halloween from the International Owl Center! We’re celebrating by sharing images of Blakiston’s Fish Owl skeletons (the largest owl in the world.)

Very interestingly, the sclerotic rings (eye bones) of Blakiston’s Fish Owls are proportionally much smaller than Snowy Owls and Great Horned Owls.

Blakiston’s Fish Owl skull on display at the Kushiroshitsugen Wildlife Center in Japan.

Snowy

Great Horned Owl

Check out more info I shared on the eye bones here!

  • Panties
    2·
    28 days ago

    That is amazing! Looks like those legs might be longer than the wings if we’re not looking at the feathers. They really have such tiny torsos compared to the rest of them. A huge part of that must be devoted to the respiratory system.

    I like fish owls. I wanted the Buffy to win last year so much :) There was this photo of one with a huge fish in the beak that I loved. Looking at the skeleton now it feels like that fish was not much smaller than the owl.

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      28 days ago

      Respiration is right up there with musculature to allow them to fly. Got a great comment thread for you here about bird breathing. Birds don’t have a diaphragm to expand or compress the lungs like we do, so they have an entirely alien (to us mammals) process how they breathe!

      As huge as that owl is, even the biggest of the big is still going to be under 10 pounds / 4.5 kg. They are mostly air, inside and out. Any extra mass just makes flying harder and raises energy requirements. Owl wings are generally large for their body size so they don’t have to flap as much, yet another thing that keeps sound down.

      Fish owls are some really cool owls, and I’d love to see one and hear one! I hear they have very deep voices that travel a long way, supposedly to carry over water noise and such. Buffy is the cutest of them IMO, but Blakiston is quite huge, yet cuddly looking. I just took a look at my stuff for this year’s contest on Friday. No offence to White Faced Owl, but we need a strong competitor for it again this year! Snowy and Burrowing really need to secure those last few votes, they keep coming close but not quite enough, and I want to see some more wildcards like Buffy hit us with some surprises.

      I’m glad to see you comment today! I feel I’ve seen you on my lurker list for a while now, and I always get excited when a new person gets excited enough to join in the conversation.

      • Panties
        2·
        26 days ago

        I’m mostly a lurker everywhere, in real life too… I like people but they make me nervous