Great Gray Owls hunting voles under snow hover to defeat an acoustic mirage

Author:

Clark Christopher J.1ORCID,Duncan James2,Dougherty Robert3ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA

2. Discover Owls, Balmoral, Manitoba, Canada R03 0H0

3. Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA

Abstract

How do Great Gray Owls ( Strix nebulosa ) capture voles (Cricetidae) through a layer of snow? As snow is a visual barrier, the owls locate voles by ear alone. To test how snow absorbs and refracts vole sound, we inserted a loudspeaker under the snowpack and analysed sound from the loudspeaker, first buried, then unburied. Snow attenuation coefficients rose with frequency (0.3 dB cm −1 at 500 Hz, 0.6 dB cm −1 at 3 kHz) such that low-frequency sound transmitted best. The Great Gray Owl has the largest facial disc of any owl, suggesting they are adapted to use this low-frequency sound. We used an acoustic camera to spatially localize sound source location, and show that snow also refracts prey sounds (refractive index: 1.16). To an owl not directly above the prey, this refraction creates an ‘acoustic mirage’: prey acoustic position is offset from its actual location. Their hunting strategy defeats this mirage because they hover directly over prey, which is the listening position with least refraction and least attenuation. Among all birds, the Great Gray Owl has the most extreme wing morphologies associated with quiet flight. These extreme wing traits may function to reduce the sounds of hovering, with implications for bioinspiration.

Publisher

The Royal Society

Subject

General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,General Environmental Science,General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine

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3. Duncan J. 1992 Influence of prey abundance and snow cover on Great Gray Owl breeding dispersal. Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba.

4. Improvements of Sound Localization Abilities by the Facial Ruff of the Barn Owl (Tyto alba) as Demonstrated by Virtual Ruff Removal

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Cited by 2 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

1. Great gray owls overcome sound illusion to hunt;Journal of Experimental Biology;2023-01-31

2. Great Gray Owls hunting voles under snow hover to defeat an acoustic mirage;Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences;2022-11-23

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