How does the Barn Owl locate prey?
They use their highly developed auditory senses to search for and locate the scurrying movements of voles in the grass. Their ear openings are fixed at counter positions on each side of the head, known as asymmetry. One opening is close to the front and set high, and the other is positioned further to the rear and lower. Both have small flaps faced forward, and aligned with the facial disk. The facial disk helps gather the sound to the flaps and openings. Each ear receives a different auditory frequency. The owl hovers over grassy fields with its head faced down, and listens. The noise created by the voles moving within the grass give off a wide range of auditory frequency, so each ear receives a different range of the spectrum. The position of the ear openings allow the sounds to reach each ear at slightly different times. The brain then calculates the distance of the sound source based entirely on the bi-angulation and frequency timings received by both ears simultaneously. When the
