Kingdom Animalia Order Strigiformes Genus Ptilopsis Higher classification Ptilopsis | Phylum Chordata Family Strigidae Scientific name Ptilopsis leucotis Rank Species | |
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Similar Owl, Bird, Eurasian scops owl, Sunda scops owl, Ptilopsis | ||
On location the northern white faced owl
The northern white-faced owl (Ptilopsis leucotis) is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. The southern white-faced owl (P. granti) was formerly included in this species and the two were known as the white-faced scops-owl.
Contents
- On location the northern white faced owl
- White faced scops owl wmv
- Fight or flight response
- In popular culture
- References
It is found in a band across Africa between the Sahara and the Equator. It occurs in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and Uganda.
White faced scops owl wmv
Fight-or-flight response
The owl has a rather notable defense mechanism. When faced with a predator (like another owl slightly larger than it) the bird flares its wings to appear larger. When faced with something much larger than itself, it pulls its feathers inwards, elongates its body, and narrows its eyes to thin slits. It is thought that it uses this ability to camouflage itself, and it shares the ability with relatives like the African scops owl.
Many different types of owls have some ability to adopt a "concealing posture", also known by the German word Tarnstellung, in which they squeeze and thin their body to look like a broken tree branch, and some types may also narrow their eyes to slits and fold a wing sideways across their chest in a Dracula-like manner to hide the lighter-colored feathers on their underparts. Such behavior has also been documented in eastern screech owls in a natural setting reacting to threats
In popular culture
A member of this species named "Popo-chan" was the subject of a Japanese television show. Another also appears in the Japanese media franchise, Kemono Friends.
