This animal is a sensory genius. They are masters at detecting everything while staying undetected. On this episode, Macken goes deep into the incredible science of how this animal can hear everything, without ever being heard; how this animal can see everything, without being seen. They are debatably the best listeners in the animal kingdom, and their entire face is like a radar dish. Find out all about them on this episode of species.
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| 0:00.0 | You know those optical illusions where you see one thing and then you see another? |
| 0:04.9 | Like it's a drawing of a rabbit and then you look at it a little closer and suddenly it becomes a duck. |
| 0:10.7 | Or first you see a vase and then it becomes two people looking at one another. |
| 0:15.8 | You know what I mean? You can't help but flip-flop in between. |
| 0:19.2 | I feel the same way when I look at a barn owl, except emotionally. |
| 0:25.3 | One minute I'm looking at them and I feel the same way that I do when I'm looking at a |
| 0:28.6 | parrot or a swan. |
| 0:30.4 | I'm just appreciating natural beauty. |
| 0:33.7 | No hint of negativity. |
| 0:36.7 | But then, in a flash, that feeling just dissipates. |
| 0:41.6 | And in a strange sort of way, I feel myself sinking into the body of a field mouse. |
| 0:49.2 | In a moment, the illusion flips and the owl goes from moon-faced to faceless, from full of soul to |
| 1:00.8 | soulless. It appears to me that the barn owl stands alone in the center of some rare |
| 1:10.4 | Venn diagram, in which the left circle holds |
| 1:14.4 | animals like parrots and peacocks and zebras, then the right circle holds sharks and |
| 1:20.6 | eye-eyes and crocodiles. The barn owl is in that little barely existing sliver of overlap. |
| 1:30.1 | They are the bewitching predator. |
| 1:33.4 | And I think that is one of the many reasons why they have been of such great spiritual interest to societies through the millennia. |
| 1:42.9 | Today we are going to demystify this bird. |
| 1:46.5 | They are only animals, like you and me. |
| 1:51.0 | But only is a strange modifier to use |
| 1:55.1 | when we are talking about an animal as glorious as the barn owl. |
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