Photo source: Julian Robinson
While most owls limit themselves to prey up to 20% of their body weight, Powerful Owls go after many arboreal mammals such as possums, gliders, and juvenile koalas, which can be 50 to 100% of their body weight. That is about 10x the body weight to prey ratio of other owls.
Here’s an Australian Geographic article about Powerful Owls worth a read with some more photos, including this low power version.
Research suggests that as habitat becomes scarcer, young owls are staying longer with their parents, who will continue feeding them into the next breeding season and that appeared to happen with Snowy II.
They’re just like people!
Yes, it doesn’t seem we’re doing any species any favors, does it? 😅
If a powerful owl has chronic fatigue is it still a powerful owl or at best a meek owl?
He just needs to rest his eyes for a minute… He’ll catch up later…
20 x 10 = 50 to 100
If we look at it as a ratio as stated, it seems to work out.
Powerful Owls are about 3 pounds. If they can take down body weight prey, that’s 3 pounds.
A big barn owl, a common owl in most parts of the world, would be 1.4 pounds. Going by the average prey weight of 20% body weight, that’s 0.28 pounds.
3 / 0.28 = 10.7
I’m still confused by ‘X times as many’ and ‘Y% more’ not seeming to add up too. Don’t worry, some day maybe we will learn.
It’s all good. Math isnt a requirement to enjoy looking at the wildlife. It’s also ok to question things, especially if they don’t make sense.
