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The Debunker: Can Owls Turn Their Heads All the Way Around?

by Ken Jennings

In November, we set our clocks an hour forward and officially say good-bye to an hour of daylight every evening. From now until spring, we're going to be spending most of our non-working hours in the dark: commuting home from the office when it's dark, making dinner when it's dark, meeting friends when it's dark, getting the kids to and from a million stupid activities in the dark. Ken Jennings, of Jeopardy! fame, is going to brighten this gloomy month with the light of knowledge, debunking some long-held myths about other nocturnal urban wanderers: the birds and critters you might see on a streetlit November night.

The Debunker: Can Owls Turn Their Heads All the Way Around?

One of the secrets of owls' lethal hunting skills is their amazing eyesight. Unlike most birds, owls have two front-facing eyes, which give them binocular vision. In other words, they're one of the few birds that could actually enjoy a 3-D movie (assuming they gave a hoot and could find a pair of the special glasses to fit them). But there are trade-offs involved: bird eyes are fixed into their sockets by a tiny ring of bone, so owls must move their whole heads any time they need to look around. In popular belief, they can swivel their heads all the way around. You know, like R2-D2, or Linda Blair in The Exorcist.

whoooo

Well, in the immortal words of Twin Peaks, the owls are not what they seem. As a moment's thought would reveal, a full rotation would mess up an owl's circulatory, nervous, and digestive systems pretty badly. The best owls can manage is a 270-degree swivel. But try to turn your neck more than 90 degrees to the left or right, and you'll agree that 270 degrees is pretty impressive.

A number of evolutionary adaptations help owls (and some other birds of prey, like hawks) accomplish what even a human contortionist's neck cannot. First off, there are skeletal differences: owl heads are attached on only one socket pivot (your neck has two) and their neck vertebrae have oversized holes running through them. Scientists have recently found that these holes contain air sacs that cushion blood vessels and prevent them from getting pinched off. The arteries to owls' heads are also wider and have built-in backups when a weird head angle cuts off some blood to the brain. Think how easy parallel parking would be if you could do the same thing! It's an ability that would really turn some heads.

Quick Quiz: In ancient Greece, owls were a symbol of wisdom because they were associated with what goddess?

Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.