One of the curious things about the ten-minute-long owl sighting--20 yards away, sitting on a dead branch--of last night was that America's Silliest Dog had no clue that it was there. The wind was blowing from us toward the owl, so there was no trace of scent. And the owl's coloration--remarkably like oak bark--kept America's Silliest Dog from having even a small chance of seeing what we all, with our African Plains Ape eyes, were watching so avidly.
I find this amazing. It was not yet full dusk. The bird subtended a full 1.5 degrees of arc. Yet America's Silliest Dog was totally clueless about the presence of a very large avian close nearby.
Posted by DeLong at September 8, 2003 09:30 AM | TrackBack
Thanks. It is exciting to observe free roaming owls. I suspect that less than 5 pcnt of the population (includind canines) have observed owls "in the field". What alerted you to its presence? The imposing silhouette? ... a strange call at dusk?
Posted by: don majors on September 9, 2003 09:00 AMApologies for the post. Didn't notice your original "Owl" post. Fun stuff!
Posted by: don majors on September 9, 2003 09:18 AM
Dogs' vision is more attuned to motion, and so they are unlikely to see someone or something if it's not moving. I let my dog out a few nights ago before going to bed (this is in Berkeley, actually), and there was a deer up the street which stood stock-still. The dog looked right at it, and didn't see it. The dog looked away, the deer bolted, and the dog turned back to see what the noise was.
I've noticed what Tyrone has (by the way, nice to hear from you, Tyrone; whatever happened to Byron the Bulb?) with cats -- they, too, seem to have a startling inability to recognize prey beasties right in front of them until the beastie moves. Of course, our own visual systems have their little evolved peculiarities - thus optical illusions.
As for America's Silliest Dog: you'll have to dispute that title with Dave Barry, who proposed a TV series about one of his own dogs' exciting everyday adventures with the theme song:
Adventure Dog,
Adventure Dog,
Kinda big, kinda strong,
Stupid as a log.
This is not really a owl story counterpart to the dumb dog theme, but more like- desperate owls do desperate things.
Once our family was out cross country skiing in the late spring. There was still a lot of heavy snow cover, so the food supply for owls was getting pretty low. I had to take my ski off to adjust my boot, there was ice glaze on the snow, and my ski started sliding down an incline. The motion attracted a great gray, who thought somehow that my ski would be some food, and began attacking it.
Posted by: northernLights on September 10, 2003 06:21 AMI'm no evolutionary biologist, but I wonder whether dogs have any reason to pay attention to stuff that goes on above them. After all, there's nothing up there that she can eat, and nothing that is going to attack her.
Posted by: David J. Balan on September 10, 2003 11:21 AM