How far can an owl turn its head?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Owls are amazing. Most are nocturnal and hunt at night. They have incredible eyesight. And a group of them is called a parliament! One of our listeners was wondering how far they can turn their heads around. We asked Lauren Smith from the Owl Research Institute to help us find the answer.

Got a Moment of Um question that’s turning you upside down? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll help get it all sorted out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	from the brains behind brains on.
0:02.0	This is the moment of um.
0:05.0	Answering those questions that make you go.
0:09.0	U.
0:10.0	U.S.
0:11.0	U. U. U. U. U.S. Moment of Um, um, um,
0:24.0	Moment of Um, comes to you from APM Studios.
0:27.0	I'm Manneko Wilhelm.
0:29.0	Um,
0:31.0	Hmm, hmm, walking outside.
0:35.0	Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, taking a walk.
0:38.0	Be bee, be bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, baa'bop, taking a walk. Bea beebe be baa taking a walk. Do do do do. What was that? Oh just the wind.
0:50.3	Do do do do do still taking a walk. Do do do do do do do do. Still taking a walk. Do do do do do. Hi neighbor
0:55.2	Oh, hi neighbor taking a walk.
0:59.6	What was that? Oh, just a leaf falling that time. Man, I'm so jumpy today. Do you ever wish that you had eyes in the back of your head? Or that you could see behind you? You know, like an owl. How do they do that anyway? I mean, I know I'm not the only one wondering that.
1:16.4	Hi, my name is Alya and I'm from Sunnyville, California. My question is, how do owls turn their heads 360 degrees?
1:29.0	In order to see around them they have to move their head around. They have really strong neck
1:34.8	muscles and they have I think it's 14 neck bones to help them do that and they can
1:39.4	turn their heads 270 degrees around. So that's almost all the degrees around.
1:43.7	So that's almost all the way around,
1:45.2	but they can't do the full 360.
1:47.3	They can't go all the way around,
	...

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