In the dark night, the barn owl prevails
April 11, 2025 | Bharti Dharapuram
Artist: Studio Kyaari
Barn owls belong to the bird family Tytonidae and are skilled hunters of the night, who use their keen sense of hearing to capture rodents and other small prey. The Common Barn Owl (Tyto alba) was once thought to be a single species with a cosmopolitan distribution. However, recent work using genetic tools shows that it comprises of three main evolutionary lineages. These are the American Barn Owl (Tyto furcata) in the Americas, the Western Barn Owl (Tyto alba) in Africa and Europe, and the Eastern Barn Owl (Tyto javanica) in the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Australia. These species are thought to have originated in Africa or Australasia about six million years ago and show subtle differences in their appearance. The Eastern Barn Owl shows genetic differences across island groups due to the isolation of populations during past sea level changes.
The barn owl has been used as a model system to understand how the brain creates a spatial map of auditory information from the environment. Since a barn owl’s eyes are fixed within their sockets, it turns its head while responding to sound, allowing researchers to record responses by tracking this movement. Classic studies by scientists Masakazu Konishi and Eric Knudsen, used lab and field experiments to investigate the exceptional hearing of these expert hunters. The face of a barn owl acts as a pair of large parabolic receivers, where a stiff rim of feathers forms troughs enclosing finer feathers. Resembling our external ears in shape and function, these concave disks capture and deflect sound to the respective ear canals. The ears are located next to the owl’s eyes with an asymmetry in their vertical positions. When a mouse scurries on the ground, differences in the time and phase of sound waves received in either ear help the barn owl localize sound horizontally. A difference in perceived loudness between the ears helps determine the source’s vertical position.
Recent studies on barn owls have revealed the brain region controlling their laser-sharp attention and discovered that senior owls retain a keen sense of hearing by the possible regeneration of hair cells in their ears. The brain circuits in barn owls involved in sound detection are also inspiring better electronic systems for navigation.
The Eastern Barn Owl is among the over thirty species of owls found in India and the most widespread of them. It is a generalist species that hunts in open areas preying on a wide range of small animals, with a special preference for rodents making it a farmer’s friend. These owls roost in cliffs, caves, tree hollows and branches, ledges and old buildings. They can be recognised by their loud screeches, often the beseeching calls of young ones for food. One may occasionally see them swooping noiselessly through the night, a gliding swathe of ghostly white. An apparition in the hubbub of a city. Though barn owls have managed to persist among humans and their concrete, their populations are threatened by various factors, including lights, kites, roadkills, illegal capture and our intolerance to their noisy nests.
On campus, we have heard of people spotting barn owls near the tennis court a few years ago, and a recent possible sighting on the West Indies Elm tree facing the new building. Please keep an eye out at night and let us know if you happen to see a barn owl. It is a magical experience.
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Below Barn Owl spreads silence;
All sound crouches to ground,
Runs for cover, huddles down.
Noise is what Owl hunts,
drops on stops dead.
Over rushes, across marshes,
Owl hushes -
Will you listen with Owl ears
for a while?
Let the wild world’s whispers
call you in?
- The Lost Spells by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris
Below Barn Owl spreads silence;All sound crouches to ground,
Runs for cover, huddles down.
Noise is what Owl hunts,
drops on stops dead.
Over rushes, across marshes,
Owl hushes -
Will you listen with Owl ears
for a while?
Let the wild world’s whispers
call you in?
- The Lost Spells by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris
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