Slow Motion Barn Owl Attack | Slo Mo #11 | BBC Earth Explore

I would like to see an incredibly detailed, beautiful slow-motion shot of a barn owl gatting its prey. So Lloyd, I can hear our star of the day behind us there. That's the barn owl, isn't it? And you've got something in your hand here that's going to hopefully lure her in. Now what makes her very special is every time we fed her, we did that sound. And it brought out a natural instinct to use her hearing to locate the beeper. Because she's really using her hearing like a wild owl, so we have to be really quiet because her whole world is sound. So she hears the slightest little whisper of someone talking and it will distract her. That's just a beautiful bird. She is, isn't she? Barn owls are obviously nocturnal hunters. They're really acoustic predators. So they've got this great facial disc on the front of their face. And it almost looks like it's surrounding their eyes, but actually it's funnelling sound towards their ears. And they've got slightly wonky ears. One's a bit higher than the other. So that builds up a three-dimensional picture of the sound around them. And it's so funny, she wasn't too fussed about getting her wings in a comfortable position, was she? No, she was just trying to get her talons down. The idea is to get the prey when she's down in the grass. Sort the rest out later, eh? I mean, that was pretty good. So maybe if we just get it just from a different angle, see exactly what's going on. In order for us to do this, I figured we'd build a fake floor, cover it with grass, drill a hole in, stick a camera underneath and see what's going on. That's stunning. That's just stunning, isn't it? And as soon as she comes into frame, you can see she's locked on. I mean, she knows exactly where she's going. She just has to get her body into the right position. And what you notice when she's coming into frame, you notice how, although her body orientation is probably that way, her face, her whole face is just really locked on her target and everything else just revolves. Yeah. So her body, sort of in that fraction of a second, she twists her whole body around to pounce. Because she's using that face of this to its best effect. Yeah, she's just so accurate. I never realised that their wings actually clapped together. I'm really happy with how that turned out. What a beautiful creature. What a beautiful creature. So we got our shots, so it's only fair that she gets a lovely little tasty dinner.