Great Horned Owls and Crows Hate Each Other

Owl flies from branch. A stealth hunter whose eating habits rival those of medieval kings. Owl dives at mouse and grass. A flying menace with some of the most advanced hearing systems in the world. A cranky fluff who could steal your heart and eat it too. Owl walks carrying a heart. This is the wise hunter of the Americas. This is the great horned owl. Owl is perched and crow flies in and lands beside it. An animated sequence shows us a slideshow of a wide variety of birds. The text on screen reads Animalogic's World of Birds. Hi, my name is Aranya Iyer and this is Animalogic's World of Birds. Trees in a forest. Today we're at Hawkeye, a raptor facility in Ontario. Meeting one of the fluffiest and crankiest birds in the world. Owl rotates head. Meet Tank. This is the resident great horned owl. Close up on owl. Their name is a bit of a misnomer. Their horns are called plumicorns and they're just tufts of feathers, which seem to be used for communication. Most of their close relatives in the Bubo genus also have plumicorns, but they're most commonly found in Eurasia, where they're known as eagle owls. Their only other close relative in North America is the snowy owl, which is slightly larger, but it doesn't have Bella Hadid's brows, so it's not considered a horned owl. This makes the great horned owl the largest bird of its kind in the Americas. Would it be possible for you to take him for a second? My arms are shivering. Just, he's heavy. Aranya passes off owl to bird handler. You might be wondering, why is he called Tank? That's because this bird is an apex predator. It'll take down anything in the forest. Illustrated owl. As you can see, these guys are huge. They can get up to 2.5 kilograms with a wingspan of 1.5 meters, just a bit smaller than the largest owl in the world, their tufted cousin, the blackest and fish owl from East Asia. This size helps them catch a huge array of prey, including relatively large animals such as snowshoe hares, large lizards, and marmots. Owl flies with prey. This diverse diet has led them to being nicknamed the red-tailed hawk of the night. Due to the hawk's famously voracious eating habits. There's also been accounts of these birds attacking porcupines. Now, it doesn't usually end well for this guy, but at least he tries. Of course, their diet largely depends on their environment. In areas with relatively few mammals, they're more than happy to go for birds. Some of them are pretty large, such as wild turkey, ravens, and the bird who wakes up every day and chooses violence, the Canada goose. But their mortal enemies are the crows. Great horned owls and crows hate each other. For an easy snack, a great horned owl will swoop in and decapitate the crow. But if it gets away, the crow will call for backup. Soon, the murder will arrive and mob the owl, diving at it, trying to knock it off its perch. If there's enough of them, they'll kill the great horned owl. It's pretty metal. Owl entry. Now, if the prey is small enough, great horned owls will eat it whole. That doesn't mean that everything gets digested, though. Things like bones, nails, teeth, fur, feather, all of that will be regurgitated about 15 hours after feeding. What they regurgitate is in the form of these tiny little pellets that if you're lucky enough to find one, you can actually dissect and put the bones together to see what exactly it was this guy ate. Perfect for date night. Close-up of fingers digging through feather and bone pellets. A series of tall cacti. This hunting ability has helped them conquer the Americas. There are great horned owls from Alaska to Argentina. Their range was considered to be even larger, but the Patagonian population was determined to be a separate species and was named the lesser horned owl. A bit rude, but okay. Lesser horned owls circled on map. Throughout their immense range, its appearance varies, but you can predict their size and color based on the local climate. Various owls on map. You might notice that Tank here is just a little bit lighter than the great horned owls that you see in photos. That's because he's a subspecies of the great horned owls from the sub-arctic. This lighter coloring helps them camouflage better in their environment. In warmer and more humid climates, they tend to be darker as that gives them better camouflage in forests. Additionally, humid areas are full of bacteria and darker feathers are more resistant to them. Like in almost every other species, those individuals living in colder climates tend to be larger than their warmer weather con specifics. This helps them keep more fat reserves for the winter. And by having a smaller surface area relative to body size, it prevents them from losing heat too quickly. In warmer areas, being smaller helps keep them cool. And since food is generally more abundant, they don't need large fat reserves. But when they do need to eat, they go hunting at night. Their sense is perfectly adapted to find scurrying prey in the dark. This guy, proportionally to its body size, has some of the biggest eyes in terrestrial vertebrates. Their eyes are also cylindrical. This combination of huge retinas with a high density of light-sensitive rod cells and telephoto-like lenses gives them great acuity in near-pitch-dark environments. But since their prey are also great at hiding, they have super-sensitive ears that help them hear the faintest moves of their next prey. Their ears are asymmetrical, with one higher than the other. This helps them find the source of any sound in a 3D environment, which is particularly helpful for a flying predator. Once their prey is found, they attack. These birds are silent but violent. They've got two features that help them move very quietly in the forest. One of those features is having really soft feathers. This means that when they ruffle around, they don't make too much of a sound. The second one is their comb-like structures on the edges of their feathers. They decrease the amount of noisy, turbulent air produced when they flap their wings. Owl flies from bird handler to perch. For comparison, take a listen to the noises peregrine falcons make. And the loud flying of a harris's hog. Ugh, my ears. Hawk perched on basket. And then, listen to the soothing whoosh of the great horned owl's flight. Owl lands on carpeted basket. If you're a forest animal, you can go from having a pretty good day to meeting your great-grandparents in the ancestral plain in a blink of an eye. Owl picks up most from grass. But just being good at sneaking up on prey doesn't make you an apex predator. In the great horned owl's case, their killer weapons are their smoky colored guns, their talons. These birds are strong birds. Their talon strength can go up to 400 psi. This makes them as strong as the famously grabby golden eagle, a giant raptor that can be three times as heavy as this owl. Crows eating. Hunting is not only used for sustenance, but also as a way to get a partner. Owl flying. Males court females by bringing them food. If she's impressed, they'll become a pair and will fly around looking for a nesting site. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. These birds don't actually build their own nests. They steal nests from other birds of prey, like the red-tailed hawk. In the colder parts of North America, they'll start nesting earlier than most other birds. They establish their nest in the late fall and their babies are born in the winter, which gives them lots of time to grow and prepare for the next winter. Owl, baby, and nest. This early breeding schedule is only possible by the relative abundance of hares that time of the year. So thank you, bugs. It's because of you that these cute babies can thrive and eventually become the apex predators of the forest. Owl, mother, and baby. Before we go, let's take another look at fluffy baby owls. So ugly, yet so cute. Aww. Gloved hand reaches out to owl. So what should we talk about next? Let me know in the comments down below, and don't forget to subscribe for new episodes every week. Keep soaring to new heights. Thanks for watching. See ya. Blue logo appears. Bell thundered.