dduane: luckstergal: bellisadinosaur: This baby owl hit our…
Sunday, April 21st, 2013
This baby owl hit our window. Gave us this look the whole time – Imgur
YOUR FORCEFIELD DISPLEASES ME
AS DOES YOUR INTERIOR DECORATING
HELP I AM CRY
Oh sweet heaven, what an expression…
Some pedantic bird-watcher points:
This isn’t actually a baby, but an adult owl of a species that doesn’t get very big. My guess is that it’s a Boreal Owl (Aegolius funereus), which has an adult length of about 10 inches. If I knew where and what time of year the OP saw it I’d feel more comfortable about the ID, but it looks a lot like a Boreal.
The whole idea of non-human organisms having “expressions” is interesting. As social apes we’ve evolved to put a lot of stock in emotional states as revealed by things like eyebrow position. Other social animals (think domestic dogs) can certainly convey emotional states to humans, though it tends to happen more via body language than facial expressions.
There’s no doubt that people can consistently read what appear to be emotional states from some birds’ facial expressions, but it tends to be hard-coded in the birds’ facial pattern. In some cases birders use it to help distinguish similar-looking species. For example, Cooper’s Hawks have a “severe” facial expression, while Sharp-shinned Hawks look more “surprised”.
Still, I owned a pet lovebird once that definitely got a pissed-off look in his eye when he was angry. So maybe this owl really is conveying an actual emotional state via its face.
Anyway: Ooh, cute!
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/48579805513.
