The colors are fantastic. I didn’t know they could squish up their faces like that. Very cute. I wonder if it makes their ears any less sensitive so they can sleep better.
Like a lot of their other body parts, owls have eyelids that can move voluntarily. They have upper eyelids for blinking, lower ones for sleeping, and a nictitating membrane to work like goggles.
The beginning of this video shows a Barnie going to sleep and you can see the dimple area of their heart shape facial disc pull in a little where I’m guessing those bottom eyelid muscles are, giving it the expression in this post.
They can move their facial disc feathers to focus sound, so if they wanted, they could probably tune it out too, but I’m not sure if that’s a safety thing for them to be able to still hear sharply while napping.
Interesting. I think you mentioned it before, but I didn’t remember the bottom eyelids could move. I wonder if that gives them an advantage somehow. Not asking you to go digging, just thinking out loud:)
It seems like they can really change the shape of their face a lot. Anywhere from a dish to a pretty pointy V, like 1:30 in the video. My totally uneducated guess is that the smushy sleepy face would channel some sound away from their ears. It can be hard to sleep when your ears are set to full power.
I was just looking to see if the lower eyelid was thicker, so as to act like blackout curtains. I found a paper on the Little Owl and it said the lower eyelid is thinner, but it did mention it was also more pigmented, so it may still block more light than the upper lid.
The little owl (Athene noctua) has movable eyelids (upper eyelid, palpebral dorsalis and lower eyelid, palpebral ventralis). The upper eyelid is shorter, thicker and high movable more than the lower one (Figs.6& 8). The palpebral margin “plica marginalis” of each eyelid is deeply pigmented and segmented into number of folds.
Owl muscle control is absolutely nuts. Moving plumicorns, ear feathers, the facial disc, even irises independently of each other… My mind can’t even imagine!
There’s so much depth and texture. I really love this one. And such a scrunchy little Barnie too!
The colors are fantastic. I didn’t know they could squish up their faces like that. Very cute. I wonder if it makes their ears any less sensitive so they can sleep better.
Like a lot of their other body parts, owls have eyelids that can move voluntarily. They have upper eyelids for blinking, lower ones for sleeping, and a nictitating membrane to work like goggles.
The beginning of this video shows a Barnie going to sleep and you can see the dimple area of their heart shape facial disc pull in a little where I’m guessing those bottom eyelid muscles are, giving it the expression in this post.
They can move their facial disc feathers to focus sound, so if they wanted, they could probably tune it out too, but I’m not sure if that’s a safety thing for them to be able to still hear sharply while napping.
Interesting. I think you mentioned it before, but I didn’t remember the bottom eyelids could move. I wonder if that gives them an advantage somehow. Not asking you to go digging, just thinking out loud:)
It seems like they can really change the shape of their face a lot. Anywhere from a dish to a pretty pointy V, like 1:30 in the video. My totally uneducated guess is that the smushy sleepy face would channel some sound away from their ears. It can be hard to sleep when your ears are set to full power.
I was just looking to see if the lower eyelid was thicker, so as to act like blackout curtains. I found a paper on the Little Owl and it said the lower eyelid is thinner, but it did mention it was also more pigmented, so it may still block more light than the upper lid.
Owl muscle control is absolutely nuts. Moving plumicorns, ear feathers, the facial disc, even irises independently of each other… My mind can’t even imagine!
Huh, fascinating! It’d be interesting to experience the world the way they do, or really a lot of other critters.
Very much so! To try out super vision, super hearing, or seeing light in a different spectrum would be so cool!