I’ve briefly talked about gular fluttering before in this post, but I came across this photo today and thought it was neat.

Owls come from all over the world, including this Snowy Owl, that, not surprisingly, like the cold.

This is Yeti, a lady Snowy ambassador at the Illinois Raptor Center. Since she is built to survive up in the Arctic, the local climate is sometimes a bit warm for her, so when we see all these Snowies with their open mouth expression, that is them thermoregulating. It is essentially the owl panting, but they are doing it with their gular sac.

This week with so the snow falling today thought l’d share a couple of pictures of one of our ambassador birds who is very happy with this weather. Yeti, our female Snowy Owl, is a popular ambassador at our programs. She was captive bred for use in programs and is a big and beautiful bird. People often wonder though about what they see pictured here. When indoors on programs (or when it’s hot outside) she often has her beak wide open as she looks around.

This is a way for her to regulate her temperature. Similar to how dogs will pant when they are warm, owls can do this to cool off. In birds this panting behavior is called gular fluttering. They don’t sweat like we do, and for a snowy owl the temperatures we find comfortable they find to be very warm. They have a lot of blood vessels that run close to the surface in their mouths and throats that allows the heat to be released more easily, and the evaporation of moisture in their mouth adds to the cooling effect. There’s nothing wrong with her, she’s just cooling herself off.

I have a little FLIR attachment for my phone that takes thermal images, showing temperatures in the images. Taking a picture of her doing this showed just how effective this is, that bright white color in her mouth is the hottest part of the picture, from all the heat she’s releasing!