ScienceIQ.com

Is It Sexism or Racism?

Can you judge a cat by the color of its coat? Well, you can judge the gender by the color of its coat! Only 1 in 27 orange cats are girls, and more surprisingly, only 1 in 3000 calico cats are males! ...

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SexismRacism
Astronomy

Saturn: The Basics

To ancient astronomers, Saturn was a wandering light near the edge of the known universe. The planet and its rings have been objects of beauty and wonder ever since Galileo noticed the 'cup handles' ... Continue reading

SaturnTheBasics
Engineering

Space Lasers Keep Earth's Air Clean

Space laser technology is coming to our smokestacks and automobiles. Leave it to NASA to take its inventions to another level, helping to keep our air clean and breathable. A recent NASA invention, ... Continue reading

SpaceLasersKeepEarthsAirClean
Biology

Sweet Dolphin Dreams

Imagine if your breathing wasn't an automatic response. That might work during the day. But what about when you went to sleep? You wouldn't get a good night's sleep if you had to wake up every few ... Continue reading

DolphinDreams
Physics

The Physics of Sandcastles

Give a plastic bucket and a shovel to a child, then turn her loose on a beach full of sand. She'll happily toil the day away building the sandcastle to end all sandcastles. It's pure fun. It's also ... Continue reading

Sandcastles

Wise As An Owl

WiseAsAnOwlAre owls the smartest birds? According to trainers that work with them, not by a long shot. Parrots are easy to train and can have extensive vocabularies. Hawks can be taught to retrieve objects. Even pigeons are used in behavioral studies and can be conditioned to obtain a reward by carrying out certain actions. But most species of owls can't be trained to do even the most rudimentary tasks. So why do we have the expression 'wise as an owl'? The most common answer - they look smart. And what makes them look so smart? It's their eyes. An owl's eyes are enormous compared the size of its head. In humans, large pupils are equated with focusing and attention being paid. An owl's large, dark eyes make it look like it is paying attention. Its eyes are also fixed in its head. In order for an owl to move its eyes, it must move the whole head. It gives an owl a intelligent gaze as it scans the surroundings.

Just how big an owl's eyes are compared to its body may surprise you. For example, the horned owl, native to North America, can grow to a height of around two feet. That's a good-sized bird. At that size you might guess that it weighs easily over ten lbs. A house cat sitting at half that height weighs about ten lbs. But the horned owl would tip the scales at no more than three lbs. They are truly light as a feather. And that is a good analogy. An owl's feathers give us a false impression of its true size. Take its feathers away and an owl is a very small bird. If you touched the top of a horned owl's head, your finger would go through two inches of feathers before making contact with its skin. But returning to those eyes, an owl's eyes are even bigger than they look. Take away all those feathers and an owl's eyes are hugh. If our eyes were proportionally as big as an owl's eyes, they'd be larger than oranges.

And therein lies the truth. An owl may be impossible to train, but that doesn't mean that there is not a lot of processing going on in its brain. Owls are master hunters. They easily boast a kill rate of over 85%. That's better by far than hawks and other raptors. A large factor in making them such effective hunters is those eyes. An owl has extraordinary night vision and unmatched peripheral vision, while at the same time maintaining excellent daytime vision. An owl can even control the amount of light entering its eyes independently, by enlarging either its left or right pupil to compensate for shadows. What this ultimately means is that the owl's brain spends much of its time processing information from its optic nerves. In fact, neurological maps of an owl's functioning brain reveal an extensive amount of brain power focused on their sense of sight. Owls may not be trainable, but that doesn't mean that there is not a lot going on in their brains. They are busy taking it all in.