This barred owl shares an adaptation with other owl species that allows it to rotate its head 270 degrees without damaging blood vessels in the neck. A study published in the Science journal found that blood vessels at the base of owls' heads are able to balloon outwards when blood flow increases.
Not a problem, however. This allows the owl to pivot on the vertebrae column much like your body can pivot on one foot. An owl's sharp beak and powerful talons allow it to kill its prey before swallowing it whole, ... Also, the big carotid arteries, instead of being on the side of the neck as in humans, are carried close to the centre of rotation just in front of the spine. Because its eyes are fixed in their sockets, it must rotate its neck to look around. Owl heads have an unusual degree of rotation to make up for their lack of eyeball movement. This enables them to create "reservoirs" of blood which are needed to supply the animals' out-of-proportion heads … Hoo wants to know?
To test this hypothesis, we recorded X-ray movies of neck rotations in living birds. But owls can rotate their necks 270 degrees---an impressive ¾ of a full rotation---without causing any harm.
### Adaptations of the Owl's Cervical & Cephalic Arteries in Relation to Extreme Neck Rotation Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Michael Habib, Tim Phelps, Lydia Gregg, and Philippe Gailloud, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Most animals would suffer a stroke or worse if they tried the owl's most famous party trick. An adaptation is a characteristic that helps give an owl species its best chance at survival. They can do this because their necks are made up of 12-14 vertebrae compared with 7 in humans. An owl's eyes are supported by bony eye sockets and they cannot turn their eyes. Photo of owl W from our breeding colony. Owl adaptations include feathers for silent flight, facial discs, asymmetrical ears, tufts, 270 degree head rotation
An owl's seeming ability to rotate its head in a complete circle is downright eerie. They can rotate through about 270 degrees in each direction. Owl tell ya!
So these arteries get much less twisting and stretching, and the potential for damage is greatly reduced.
How Does an Owl Rotate Its Neck Almost Full Circle?
It's the owl's greatest trick - turning its head almost a full circle. Owls have unmoving eyeballs, so neck rotation is necessary for the animal to have any sort of peripheral vision.
Owls live in many different environments but have evolved in order to stay near the top of the food chain. Barn owl showing a natural head rotation. An owl would have to turn its whole head to the right and then to left to take in normal human field of vision. This arrangement is seen in other birds, but in owls the … These neck bones, along with a special bone at the base of the skull, allow movement. Most animals, humans included, can only turn their heads so far without snapping their necks or causing a stroke.
2) Owls have only one occipital articulation with the cervical vertebrae. Moreover, we measured forced neck rotations in carcasses and analyzed the mobility of each joint … An owl's apparent head rotation is part illusion, part structural design. The bird turns the head to the left by about 180°.
Humans have two articulations. The owl neck provides the first example of this type of anatomical variation ever discovered. Owls have 14 neck bones – double the number humans have. The graphic also points out that the owl's intermediate carotid arteries are positioned close to the neck's axis of rotation, "decreasing the likelihood of stretching and/or occlusion of the arteries." With extremely flexible necks—fourteen neck bones and a swiveling bone structure at the base of the neck—they can turn their heads almost completely around. Media caption An owl demonstrates an 270-degree turn (Video by JHU). Alex Santoso • Friday, February 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM • 2 . It can actually rotate its head about 270 degrees – a marvelous anatomical feat. Owls' entire bodies are designed around the ability to turn their heads to extreme angles. In an Exorcist-style display of flexibility, owls can rotate their necks a maximum of 270 degrees without breaking blood vessels or tearing tendons. Owls do not have fully rotatable heads, though it sometimes looks like it.
The S-shaped form of the owl neck led to a specification of the hypothesis: the movement in the more horizontal lower part should be a rolling movement, whereas the more verti-cal upper part should perform a yaw movement.