Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Evolution and Adaptation of the Owl
Over the years studies have endured to study the owl in its natural environment and in the controlled environment. Much has been found about owls but more can still be learnt. Owls are said to belong to the Aves as their phylogenetic and two distinct families of owls have been pointed out, the Barn owls and the other types of owl. There are 17 known species of barn owls throughout the world and they belong to the family Tytonidae and the other family of Strigidae comprise of the other 161 species that are known (Carolina Biological Supply Company, 2011).
The oldest known fossils for the owl date back to 38-54 million years ago and were from Miocene. Going by the evidence collected from the fossils, the ancient owls evolved into the two families of owl in the modern world....
For the Barn Owl, it is estimated that its oldest specie dates back to 24 million years ago. The giant Barn owls are found to have once been thriving in the Mediterranean region and the Caribbean area between 10,000 -- 30,000 years ago.
The giant Barn owl, also referred to as Ornimegalonyx are said to have been almost 3 times larger than the modern Barn owl and almost twice as big as the modern Great Horned owl. Ornimegalonyx is said to have preyed on animals such as the giant rodents that are almost four feet long. Generally there are 134 known species of owl in the world with the largest of them all being the Eurasian Eagle Owl and the smallest being Elf Owl. A significant two thirds of all the owls are nocturnal with the rest being diurnal and widely solitary in their life.
Most owls hunt small…
Since the owl is a predator and has much of its life active at night, there are several adaptations that is has developed over the years to enable it to be a good hunter and for its survival, these adaptations are in form of the vision, hearing, flight and the mode of flight.
Vision; the owl has its eyes located at the front of the head in a shallow dish like depression to enable it to collect the maximum amount of light emanating from the target. They are able to rotate their head at 270 degrees hence giving it the wider view spectrum. The owl also has disproportionate large eyes in comparison to their skull relative to other birds as well as the eyes being tubular in shape. Due to this tubular shape of the eyes, they cannot be rotated as in other birds but the owl uses the 270 degrees head swivel without necessarily moving the torso. This will also keep the bird still and silent not to arouse a potential prey.
Flight; most owls have the ability to fly without producing any sound. This is due to the serrations that are found along their feathers that minimize the rattling of the feathers while on flight hence giving them an advantage over the prey that may be depending or hearing for identification of any predators in the dark (Deane, P. Lewis, 2005). The surface of the feathers mainly used in flight is covered with velvet like structure which helps in the absorption of the sound of the wing while it is
Breast Cancer Pathophysiology Breast Cancer Advanced Pathophysiology Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women worldwide. There are three general determinants associated with the cause of the disease: heredity factors, environmental factors, and hormonal factors. The risk of developing breast cancer increases with age, as 78% of cases are diagnosed in women ages 50 and older. Risk factors are distinguished by their respective etiological influences, such as family history, lifestyle, and
A clear vision of objectives for the present and future of the center should be elucidated at this stage. Design and building are obvious and crucial aspects that also take into account and depend on the initial analysis and planning phase. One always has to take into account the fact that data centers will often need to expand. This can be catered for by a modular design and building approach;
To this point, Chouliarki (2000) argues that "the facilitation of deliberative processes among audiences is a matter not only of changing institutional arrangements (towards a regulation of marketized media) but also of changing the mode of articulation of media discourse itself; even though the latter may be a consequence of the former, each is a sine qua non-for deliberative democracy." (Chouliarki, 293) To an extent then, these approaches to language
Strategy to Implementation and Action Plans Business Strategy Implementation From Strategy to Implementation Action Plans The development of action plans is a process of putting the wheels on a strategic plan. Action plan development is crucial to implementation success as it outlines an overarching and a detailed map for achieving the goals and objectives outlined in the strategic plan. It is important for action plans to be comprehensive, providing both a macro and a
solution of the heterogeneous data integration problem is presented with the explanation if the criteria to be employed in the approval of the validity. The tools to be used are also indicated. The proposed solution is to use semantic web technologies (Semantic Data Integration Middleware (SIM) Architecture) for the initial integration process (Cardoso,2007) and then couple it with broker architecture to improve integration and interoperability while solving the problem of
Abstract The relationship between a predator and a prey is quite essential to the dynamics in the wild. Various classic approaches have been employed in the attempt to predict and comprehend the nature of the consumptive interaction between a predator and a prey (Schmitz, 2017). Using this approach has not yielded any sufficient insight on the context and complexity that is characteristic of the relationship between predators and preys. Schmitz (2017)