The owls are what they seem
November 4, 2015 2:54 PM Subscribe
If you happen to be lucky enough to find yourself in a room with four owls, here is how to blow. their. minds.
Through all the self-discovery, these birds don’t for a moment drop their so-serious visages.
This is a darling video, but I think that the writer does not quite understand how owl faces work.
I do wish my career path had taken me to rooms with owls, though.
posted by Frowner at 3:11 PM on November 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
This is a darling video, but I think that the writer does not quite understand how owl faces work.
I do wish my career path had taken me to rooms with owls, though.
posted by Frowner at 3:11 PM on November 4, 2015 [12 favorites]
Previously: ... dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors (dolphin link is dead); and In a rainforest in Gabon there lives a camera trap. And a mirror?
posted by filthy light thief at 3:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 3:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
"these birds don’t for a moment drop their so-serious visages"
It's called Resting Beak Face and they can't help it, you insensitive clod!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [89 favorites]
It's called Resting Beak Face and they can't help it, you insensitive clod!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [89 favorites]
A gaggle of owls bobbing and weaving while wide-eyed with curiosity...
I'm pretty sure that one of the ways that owl faces work is by going about nearly every waking moment while wide-eyed.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm pretty sure that one of the ways that owl faces work is by going about nearly every waking moment while wide-eyed.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
"Dude, stop touching me - can't you see I'm busy checking out this owl?!"
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:21 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:21 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
I love bringing this one(SYTL) up.
It does not drink... wine.
posted by LD Feral at 3:30 PM on November 4, 2015 [19 favorites]
It does not drink... wine.
posted by LD Feral at 3:30 PM on November 4, 2015 [19 favorites]
This really reminded me of something a friend posted to his Facebook last week, and I think it's worth sharing.
We love watching animals confront themselves in mirrors because we want to see the moment when the animal gets outside itself. The animal is all the way inside itself and most of them stay that way. We are distributed almost completely outside ourselves, and must maintain practices to get back in. Exercise, meditation, yoga, sex–these are all strategies designed to get us back into our bodies. How did we get outside of our bodies? We pulled each other out. Our conscious minds accidentally ballooned out of our skulls like a swollen protuberance and then the weak force of attention from other human minds helped keep us there, helped spread ourselves into an external lattice. What I mean is that we, as a species, are so social and our evolutionary success was so predicated on social collaboration that it produced a pressure forcing us out of ourselves. In order to correctly navigate complex social spaces you have to pay a lot of attention to others, to understand them and read their intentions, to develop a theory of mind about them, and eventually to mimic them (in order to make friends). And also correct social steerage is predicated at least partially on self-awareness, which requires observation from an outside perspective. There are many obvious advantages to this position, but it is easy to observe a dog’s simple, direct, blind relationship with itself and feel a hint of jealousy. Or any other non-human mammal, really.posted by naju at 3:30 PM on November 4, 2015 [61 favorites]
I thought that the bobbing and weaving display was less about the adorbs and more about imminent gonna fuck your fucking owl shit the fuck right up.
posted by scruss at 3:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [37 favorites]
posted by scruss at 3:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [37 favorites]
can't it be both?
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:46 PM on November 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:46 PM on November 4, 2015 [6 favorites]
I love bringing this one (SYTL) up.
What in the HELL kind of owl IS that and how does it DO that?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 PM on November 4, 2015
What in the HELL kind of owl IS that and how does it DO that?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:55 PM on November 4, 2015
That transforming owl is my favorite owl of all the owls.
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:00 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by soren_lorensen at 4:00 PM on November 4, 2015
What in the HELL kind of owl IS that and how does it DO that?
A northern white-faced owl, I believe. Description of the behavior is under "Fight-or-flight response."
You can also read a full paper in "Social Behavior of North American Owls."
posted by mykescipark at 4:02 PM on November 4, 2015
A northern white-faced owl, I believe. Description of the behavior is under "Fight-or-flight response."
You can also read a full paper in "Social Behavior of North American Owls."
posted by mykescipark at 4:02 PM on November 4, 2015
Idiot humans - they're just gauging what the precise, optimal moment to STRIKE is.
posted by ryanshepard at 4:03 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by ryanshepard at 4:03 PM on November 4, 2015
Owls: Cats with feathers...
posted by jim in austin at 4:09 PM on November 4, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 4:09 PM on November 4, 2015 [11 favorites]
I love bringing this one (SYTL) up.
What in the HELL kind of owl IS that and how does it DO that?
Doesn't a cat do it as well? Not that I've answered the biomechanics involved...Kudos to LD Feral for linking it. There are quite a few rare, amazing animal videos that I'd only see on sites like Funny Or Die of all places. Before YouTube, I had to scour the web for video and animation I presented as interstitials for public high school kids. There was one of an octopus, a nice long shot of it appearing from "nowhere" and moving about...10 years! later, it's still being upvoted on Reddit.
In high school, I realized references to shows like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom were not cool or interesting to discuss among most. And by any account, extinction rates were poorly understood and frightening. I was raised on an Aesop's Fables book, and it seemed some following generation would no longer have associations I take for granted such as why a fox is clever? Anthropomorphization isn't a great thing, but...
On Preview...Jim in Austin, jinx!
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:12 PM on November 4, 2015
What in the HELL kind of owl IS that and how does it DO that?
Doesn't a cat do it as well? Not that I've answered the biomechanics involved...Kudos to LD Feral for linking it. There are quite a few rare, amazing animal videos that I'd only see on sites like Funny Or Die of all places. Before YouTube, I had to scour the web for video and animation I presented as interstitials for public high school kids. There was one of an octopus, a nice long shot of it appearing from "nowhere" and moving about...10 years! later, it's still being upvoted on Reddit.
In high school, I realized references to shows like Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom were not cool or interesting to discuss among most. And by any account, extinction rates were poorly understood and frightening. I was raised on an Aesop's Fables book, and it seemed some following generation would no longer have associations I take for granted such as why a fox is clever? Anthropomorphization isn't a great thing, but...
On Preview...Jim in Austin, jinx!
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:12 PM on November 4, 2015
Naju's friend is really onto something, but I think there are limits to our "outside selves." Here's what I wrote previously:
posted by notyou at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
70's Conceptual artist Dan Graham used to do a lot of crazy stuff with mirrors and glass and cameras. There was a retrospective at LA's MOCA a couple years back. One of the pieces was an arrangement of cameras and one way mirrors such that the "reflection" you saw in the mirror was a video recording of you several seconds ago.It doesn't take much to crack our identities, whether we have teeny bird brains with limited social formation or big human brains bubbling out all around. Even exteriorized, we're all interior.
What did that feel like? Identity destroying .
posted by notyou at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [10 favorites]
The bobbing and weaving made me wonder if they were trying to range the owl in the camera, moving around to get better parallax.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by rmd1023 at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Anyway. Cute birds!
posted by notyou at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by notyou at 4:13 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
how does it DO that?
Owls are way smaller than they look. They're mostly feathers. Even their feet are covered in feathers. All those feathers can be puffed out or flattened down.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:18 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Owls are way smaller than they look. They're mostly feathers. Even their feet are covered in feathers. All those feathers can be puffed out or flattened down.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:18 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
When these owls see themselves for the first time in the front-facing camera, their immediate reaction is to spin their heads in circles so that they could finally see how cool it looks!
These owl aren't looking in a mirror, they're looking at a display, which means that each eye is getting an image with identical relationships between foreground and background objects, which their visual systems would ordinarily treat as meaning that everything they're looking at is beyond the range of parallax -- 20-30 ft. in humans IIRC, probably more in owls considering how sharp their vision is and how still they can hold their heads -- so they move their heads around for more parallax, but they still don't get any, so either those are some monster huge owls to have such big images from so far away, or what? They look stuck in a loop of contradiction to me.
posted by jamjam at 4:19 PM on November 4, 2015 [24 favorites]
These owl aren't looking in a mirror, they're looking at a display, which means that each eye is getting an image with identical relationships between foreground and background objects, which their visual systems would ordinarily treat as meaning that everything they're looking at is beyond the range of parallax -- 20-30 ft. in humans IIRC, probably more in owls considering how sharp their vision is and how still they can hold their heads -- so they move their heads around for more parallax, but they still don't get any, so either those are some monster huge owls to have such big images from so far away, or what? They look stuck in a loop of contradiction to me.
posted by jamjam at 4:19 PM on November 4, 2015 [24 favorites]
My cat was pretty entranced by all those big eyes and bobbing heads.
Owl's well that ends well, he says.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:19 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Owl's well that ends well, he says.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:19 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Another thing (and notyou might be hinting at this) - when we look at a front-facing camera, our minds don't notice the delay/latency all that much. To us we're just seeing an up-to-the-second updated image as if we're looking in a mirror. Maybe owls don't have that, and to them it's very curious that there's this severely delayed version of themselves. We'd be tripped out too if we saw that. It might be flickering for them too - like the flickering we might experience if frames of a movie are slowed down enough for us to notice that we're actually just watching a sequence of still images. I guess it's a good question whether this is an example of superior or inferior human brainage. I like the idea that we're laughing at their reaction, when in fact our lack of reaction is an example of our eyes/brains being less astute than theirs.
posted by naju at 4:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by naju at 4:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]
naju: when we look at a front-facing camera, our minds don't notice the delay/latency all that much
Speak for yourself because it bugs the heck out of me. Sometimes I feel like dodging UI latency is the real reason I prefer command-line work. Even this "live" preview that takes a fraction of a second to update while I type... stop it. stop it! It keeps doing it...
posted by traveler_ at 4:51 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
Speak for yourself because it bugs the heck out of me. Sometimes I feel like dodging UI latency is the real reason I prefer command-line work. Even this "live" preview that takes a fraction of a second to update while I type... stop it. stop it! It keeps doing it...
posted by traveler_ at 4:51 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
100% here for this kind of quality content.
posted by Hermione Granger at 5:23 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by Hermione Granger at 5:23 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
My tablet hates CNN's videos so here's a link to the high res original (most likely? Based on posting date)
Notice how the junk agregators took the poster's name out. Is that a thing?
posted by fiercekitten at 6:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Notice how the junk agregators took the poster's name out. Is that a thing?
posted by fiercekitten at 6:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]
Owls: Cats with feathers...
Yeah, that fourth one was the owl version of my cat.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah, that fourth one was the owl version of my cat.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:01 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
fiercekitten's video is much better, and I'd be totally happy if the mods swapped it out with the one I posted. AND it gives info I'd been wondering about -- namely, why do these people get to be in a room with owls and I don't?! Welp, turns out that this is from an actual owl cafe -- yes, an owl cafe!! -- in Japan, and OMG now I really need to go to Japan right now.
posted by mudpuppie at 6:08 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by mudpuppie at 6:08 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
These owl aren't looking in a mirror, they're looking at a display, which means that each eye is getting an image with identical relationships between foreground and background objects, which their visual systems would ordinarily treat as meaning that everything they're looking at is beyond the range of parallax -- 20-30 ft. in humans IIRC, probably more in owls considering how sharp their vision is and how still they can hold their heads -- so they move their heads around for more parallax, but they still don't get any, so either those are some monster huge owls to have such big images from so far away, or what? They look stuck in a loop of contradiction to me.
Sorry, but this is not remotely true-- images on an LCD screen have the expected parallax (and binocular disparity) for an object at the screen's location. Binocular vision in all animals operates based on the same fundamental geometric principles, and when we look at an LCD monitor it does not appear to be infinitely far way, but rather it appears to be at the distance of the monitor, and the same holds for an owl viewing the screen.
posted by Pyry at 6:22 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sorry, but this is not remotely true-- images on an LCD screen have the expected parallax (and binocular disparity) for an object at the screen's location. Binocular vision in all animals operates based on the same fundamental geometric principles, and when we look at an LCD monitor it does not appear to be infinitely far way, but rather it appears to be at the distance of the monitor, and the same holds for an owl viewing the screen.
posted by Pyry at 6:22 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
If anything, the owl on the monitor would appear smaller to the actual owl because the image of the owl on the display is probably not life size, in the same way that children might refer to the "little people" in the TV.
posted by Pyry at 6:31 PM on November 4, 2015
posted by Pyry at 6:31 PM on November 4, 2015
Sorry, but this is not remotely true-- images on an LCD screen have the expected parallax (and binocular disparity) for an object at the screen's location.
Um, no. There's none. You can't see around things on the screen by moving around.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Um, no. There's none. You can't see around things on the screen by moving around.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:40 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]
Guys, you're both right. Which is what was confusing the owls.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:44 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:44 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]
You people are missing the point, IT'S OWLS.
posted by mudpuppie at 6:44 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
posted by mudpuppie at 6:44 PM on November 4, 2015 [4 favorites]
*metafilter wildly orients its head around mudpuppie, trying to understand*
posted by naju at 7:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
posted by naju at 7:20 PM on November 4, 2015 [15 favorites]
Owls: Cats with feathers...
True. I'm in a social media group for cat pictures. Owls have been deemed honorary cats.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:24 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
True. I'm in a social media group for cat pictures. Owls have been deemed honorary cats.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:24 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]
My tablet hates CNN's videos so here's a link to the high res original (most likely? Based on posting date)
Notice how the junk agregators took the poster's name out. Is that a thing?
posted by fiercekitten at 8:01 PM on November 4
Thx so much for that link -- I use NoScript and I'd have had to open up upwards of 497,872 scripts to play that vid on that page and that's just not gonna happen; I really appreciate that you did the work for us.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:10 PM on November 4, 2015
Notice how the junk agregators took the poster's name out. Is that a thing?
posted by fiercekitten at 8:01 PM on November 4
Thx so much for that link -- I use NoScript and I'd have had to open up upwards of 497,872 scripts to play that vid on that page and that's just not gonna happen; I really appreciate that you did the work for us.
posted by dancestoblue at 11:10 PM on November 4, 2015
Why are these owls in a room in the first place?
Why are they surrounded by idiot grinning humans calling them cute?
An owl cafe? What the fuck?
The whole barely unspoken undertone of this video and this thread is that owls are stupid because they don't understand video technology.
I think humans are stupid because they don't understand owls.
But I don't think humans are cute.
posted by crazylegs at 6:20 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Why are they surrounded by idiot grinning humans calling them cute?
An owl cafe? What the fuck?
The whole barely unspoken undertone of this video and this thread is that owls are stupid because they don't understand video technology.
I think humans are stupid because they don't understand owls.
But I don't think humans are cute.
posted by crazylegs at 6:20 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
It's called Resting Beak Face and they can't help it, you insensitive clod!Twitter Pony: This needs to go in the @VeryMetaFilter bot's rotation.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 7:19 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Swapped in original youtube link. OvO
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:49 AM on November 5, 2015 [2 favorites]
Our conscious minds accidentally ballooned out of our skulls like a swollen protuberance and then the weak force of attention from other human minds helped keep us there
I've seen that movie.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:22 PM on November 5, 2015
I've seen that movie.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:22 PM on November 5, 2015
I thought I needed one owl but apparently I need multiple owls.
posted by jaguar at 7:52 PM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jaguar at 7:52 PM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]
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