When a pigeon flies by, you can hear its wings make a sloppy, flapping sound as it makes its way through the air. But what about barn owls? Complete silence! When comparing the sound of a barn owl the flapping sound of a pigeon, it’s like comparing the sound of a passenger jet with a paper airplane. It’s pretty amazing to see and in this BBC Earth video they set up microphones along the flight path of the birds to let us hear the difference.
But how is this possible? Well it’s due to fact that the barn awl has such giant wings attached to such a small body. This is allowing the creature to gently flap its wings to glide along. A pigeon’s wing is much smaller so it needs to flap its wings furiously to stay up in the air.
Using sensitive sound equipment the team try to find out how an owl can fly so silently compared to other birds.
Taken from Super Powered Owls.
