From Melvin Laureano Nature & Wildlife

A Great Gray Owl delicately testing the strength of a pine tree’s tip before settling-these large owls often perch high to scan and listen for prey below.

Mountainview County, AB

The world’s largest owl by overall length, the Great Grey is mostly air.

    • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      1 day ago

      Hollow is somewhat misleading. It’s not like a soda straw or pipe, but it’s lined with lattice like structure. It reminds me of a gluten matrix in bread dough!

      While every gram counts to a bird, solid bones bend and flex, while birds’ bones are very rigid to withstand the extreme forces flight puts against their bodies.

      I’m curious to read the linked article in the other reply to get more fine details.

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
        7·
        1 day ago

        Owls are about 40-60% floof, though this particular owl is on the high end of that spectrum since it lives in the cold.

              • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
                2·
                17 hours ago

                I can see that for a Great Grey, they got tons of feathers everywhere, but some of the tropic and temperate owls that don’t have fuzzy feet and legs would have to have a lower percentage, I’d think.

                I’ll have to see if I can find a more definitive source for this factoid one of these days. It’s one of those things I see repeated all the time but no source is ever given.

                But they are still very floody beasts whatever the actual number 😊

    • Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world
      4·
      9 hours ago

      This has been studied and proven incorrect

      bird skeletons can appear to be thin and delicate, yet contribute just as much to total body mass as do the skeletons of terrestrial mammals.

      https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2880151/

      Next day edit - Akshually this was just meant to be an interesting reply, hopefully it was well received. I was tired and busy yesterday, sorry if this came across as blunt/rude.