12/24/2024
Seasons Greetings from Mach1!
On behalf of all our clients & collaborators Mach1 has made another donation to The Owl Trust.
With Gratitude & Best Wishes for the New Year!
- Drazen, Dylan, Jacqui & the Mach1 team.
Over the yrs, we’ve adopted a growing number of owls at The Owl Trust. This is Lobot, another Bengal Eagle Owl we helped rescue. Lobot joins other Mach1 owls: Bellatrix, a White-Faced Scops Owl from Africa with striking orange eyes; Astrophel, a Western Screech Owl from the USA with brilliant yellow eyes; AgentM, another majestic Bengal Eagle Owl; & Azimuth, a beautiful female Snowy Owl.
We’re proud to support these incredible creatures & The Owl Trust’s important work.
Mach1’s mascot is the Owl. An Owl’s range of audible sounds isn’t unlike humans (200–12,000 Hz), but its hearing is much more acute at certain frequencies, enabling it to hear even the slightest prey movement. When a noise is heard, an Owl can tell its direction due to the minute time difference in which the sound is perceived in the left & right ear—about 0.00003 seconds (30 millionths of a second!).
An Owl can also tell if a sound is higher or lower using the asymmetrical nature of its ear openings. The left ear opening is higher than the right, so a sound from below the Owl’s line of sight is louder in the right ear. Signals from left, right, up, & down combine instantly in the Owl’s brain, creating a mental image of the sound source.
Studies of Owl brains show their medulla (the area linked to hearing) is much more complex than in other birds, with at least 95,000 neurons—3x as many as a Crow.
Bengal Eagle Owls like Lobot & AgentM are one of several species with ear tufts. Using asymmetrical ear openings, they align sound vertically. These signals combine instantly, allowing them to hunt in total darkness.
