Deep Look | Watch Barn Owls Swallow Rodents Whole | Deep Look @KQEDDeepLook | Uploaded 2 years ago | Updated 7 minutes ago
Barn owls swoop down on rodents and swallow them whole – gophers, voles and mice, gone in a few gulps. But how do they keep down all that food? Well, they don’t. In a few stomach-turning steps, they transform the varmints into compact balls of fur and bones known as pellets.
Watch Far Out on PBS Terra! youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnNZYWyBGJ1EzMbF4T-PPNmqhXFY87Kfp
DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
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The secret to turning a whole rodent into an owl pellet is in a barn owl’s stomach. It has two chambers.
The first chamber oozes digestive juices, like our stomach. The second one – the gizzard – squeezes the rodent remains with powerful muscles. The fats and proteins get absorbed. After about eight hours in the gizzard, the fur and bones become tightly compacted into an oval that the owl regurgitates.
---+ What can scientists learn by studying what's inside owl pellets?
“I think it’s really fascinating you can study their diet so easily by dissecting these pellets,” said Matt Johnson, who oversees the Barn Owl Research Team at Cal Poly Humboldt, in Arcata, California. He and his students monitor 300 nest boxes set up by winegrowers in the state’s Napa Valley.
Winegrowers invite barn owls (Tyto furcata) to raise their young in nest boxes. By hunting gophers and voles, which can damage grapevines, barn owls help with pest control.
Dissecting owl pellets and pulling out the bones hidden inside helps researchers identify what animals a barn owl ate and how many.
In Napa, “voles, mice and gophers make up 90% of what they eat,” said Johnson. “Mice are almost always the third place in that list.”
“Their diet varies from place to place and year to year,” he added. “We’ve collected some pellets that are majority voles, or majority gophers.”
---+ How many rodents can a barn owl kill?
While a graduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt, Dane St. George estimated in 2020 that a family of barn owls living in and around a vineyard in Napa can eat 3,500 rodents a year. By tracking the barn owls’ movements, he found that almost 45% of the rodents they killed came from within vineyards.
---+ Find additional resources and a transcript on KQED Science:
kqed.org/science/1979934/barn-owl-table-manners-are-just-different
---+ The young barn owl coughing up a *gigantic* pellet in our episode was filmed by a camera in a nest box in Israel. Watch the whole video here: youtu.be/sCTvWDd7bjc
And livestream barn owls, kestrels and other birds here: youtube.com/c/CharterGroupBirdcams
---+ More Great Deep Look episodes:
What Makes Owls So Quiet and So Deadly?
youtu.be/a68fIQzaDBY
You’ve Heard of a Murder of Crows. How About a Crow Funeral?
youtu.be/ixYVFZnNl6s
Watch These Peregrine Falcons Become Fierce Parents
youtu.be/RTNZmnD27is
🏆Congratulations🏆 to the first 5 fans on our Deep Look Community Tab to correctly answer our GIF challenge! The owlet pictured was 63 days old.
Blunderbuss13 (63)
im a comment J (63)
Imani Perlie (63)
Justa Bone (64)
Moses Aubrey (61)
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---+ About KQED
KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, CA, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media. Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, the largest science and environment reporting unit in California. KQED Science is supported by the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED.
#barnowls #owlpellet #deeplook
Barn owls swoop down on rodents and swallow them whole – gophers, voles and mice, gone in a few gulps. But how do they keep down all that food? Well, they don’t. In a few stomach-turning steps, they transform the varmints into compact balls of fur and bones known as pellets.
Watch Far Out on PBS Terra! youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnNZYWyBGJ1EzMbF4T-PPNmqhXFY87Kfp
DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.
--
The secret to turning a whole rodent into an owl pellet is in a barn owl’s stomach. It has two chambers.
The first chamber oozes digestive juices, like our stomach. The second one – the gizzard – squeezes the rodent remains with powerful muscles. The fats and proteins get absorbed. After about eight hours in the gizzard, the fur and bones become tightly compacted into an oval that the owl regurgitates.
---+ What can scientists learn by studying what's inside owl pellets?
“I think it’s really fascinating you can study their diet so easily by dissecting these pellets,” said Matt Johnson, who oversees the Barn Owl Research Team at Cal Poly Humboldt, in Arcata, California. He and his students monitor 300 nest boxes set up by winegrowers in the state’s Napa Valley.
Winegrowers invite barn owls (Tyto furcata) to raise their young in nest boxes. By hunting gophers and voles, which can damage grapevines, barn owls help with pest control.
Dissecting owl pellets and pulling out the bones hidden inside helps researchers identify what animals a barn owl ate and how many.
In Napa, “voles, mice and gophers make up 90% of what they eat,” said Johnson. “Mice are almost always the third place in that list.”
“Their diet varies from place to place and year to year,” he added. “We’ve collected some pellets that are majority voles, or majority gophers.”
---+ How many rodents can a barn owl kill?
While a graduate student at Cal Poly Humboldt, Dane St. George estimated in 2020 that a family of barn owls living in and around a vineyard in Napa can eat 3,500 rodents a year. By tracking the barn owls’ movements, he found that almost 45% of the rodents they killed came from within vineyards.
---+ Find additional resources and a transcript on KQED Science:
kqed.org/science/1979934/barn-owl-table-manners-are-just-different
---+ The young barn owl coughing up a *gigantic* pellet in our episode was filmed by a camera in a nest box in Israel. Watch the whole video here: youtu.be/sCTvWDd7bjc
And livestream barn owls, kestrels and other birds here: youtube.com/c/CharterGroupBirdcams
---+ More Great Deep Look episodes:
What Makes Owls So Quiet and So Deadly?
youtu.be/a68fIQzaDBY
You’ve Heard of a Murder of Crows. How About a Crow Funeral?
youtu.be/ixYVFZnNl6s
Watch These Peregrine Falcons Become Fierce Parents
youtu.be/RTNZmnD27is
🏆Congratulations🏆 to the first 5 fans on our Deep Look Community Tab to correctly answer our GIF challenge! The owlet pictured was 63 days old.
Blunderbuss13 (63)
im a comment J (63)
Imani Perlie (63)
Justa Bone (64)
Moses Aubrey (61)
---+ Thank you to our Top Patreon Supporters ($10+ per month)!
Jessica
Burt Humburg
Karen Reynolds
Allison & Maka Masuda
Daisuke Goto
David Deshpande
Wild Turkey
J8Zenith
Chris B Emrick
Tianxing Wang
Companion Cube
Mark Jobes
Blanca Vides
Kevin Judge
Laurel Przybylski
Jana Brenning
Jason Jia
monoirre
Anastasia Grinkevic
Titania Juang
Roberta K Wright
Aurora
Supernovabetty
Carrie Mukaida
Kimberly Hall
Jellyman
El Samuels
KW
Syniurge
Cristen Rasmussen
Nicky Orino
Mehdi
Shonara Rivas
Cindy McGill
SueEllen McCann
Noreen Herrington
Laurel Przybylski
Misia Clive
Kelly Hong
Shelley Pearson Cranshaw
Jeremiah Sullivan
Caitlin McDonough
吳怡彰
Louis O'Neill
Nicolette Ray
Elizabeth Ann Ditz
Shonara Rivas
Delphine Tseng
Wade Tregaskis
Silvan
Levi Cai
TierZoo
Kenneth Fyrsterling
---+ Follow Deep Look and KQED Science on social:
tiktok.com/@deeplookofficial
patreon.com/deeplook
Instagram: instagram.com/kqedscience
Twitter: twitter.com/kqedscience
---+ About KQED
KQED, an NPR and PBS affiliate in San Francisco, CA, serves Northern California and beyond with a public-supported alternative to commercial TV, radio and web media. Funding for Deep Look is provided in part by PBS Digital Studios. Deep Look is a project of KQED Science, the largest science and environment reporting unit in California. KQED Science is supported by the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED.
#barnowls #owlpellet #deeplook
