Almost all species of owls are nocturnal, meaning they are quite active during the night. Because they are highly sensitive to the light, the Tyto alba cannot perform their daily function during the day or else they will be at a disadvantage to their temporary blindness (Orlowski, 2012). Research performed by Harmening show that in the presence of light using an aberrometer, the barn owl can voluntarily control the size of their pupils between 6.3 mm and 7.1 mm depending on the light intensity, a unique characteristic not found in most mammals (Harmening, 2007). Because of this ability the barn owls have low astigmatism or glaring of the light reflected back in their eyes.
The asymmetrical eyes of the Tyto alba are oriented in front of the …show more content…
This is important for predators because it gives them the advantage of detecting their prey within dense hiding places. In one experiment done by Orlowski and his team, the Tyto barn owls were conditioned via food rewards to locate the target that stood out among the other distractors (Orlowski, 2015). During the experiment, there would be at least one item different from the rest, whether it was different by color, orientation, etc., and it was the owl’s goal to find that specific target (Orlowski, 2015). For one of the targets used, a white cardboard piece was placed among other grey cardboard pieces on the floor of a dark room, and the owls were expected to fixate on the target and fly down from their perch to retrieve it, with the time it took for them to find the pop-out target recorded using a camera headpiece (Orlowski, 2015). Results showed that the barn owls took over 114.7/47.7 seconds to fixate on the correct target and fly down from their perch (Orlowski, 2015). This performance greatly depicts the patient nature of these silent hunters as they use their keen eyesight to wait for the right moment to