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Barn Owls have simple brains, but a new study suggests owls can visually process objects in ways similar to that of animals with more sophisticated perception.

Owl eyes are round, not spherical and these immobile, tubular structures sit on the front of an owl’s face like a pair of built-in binoculars.

An owl's eyes are round and sit on the front of an owl’s face like a pair of built-in binoculars — An owl’s eyes are round and sit on the front of an owl’s face like a pair of built-in binoculars

This binocular vision helps the birds to focus in on prey and see in three dimensions, much like humans.

Except we don’t have to turn our whole heads to see a subject.

The ability to perceive an object is crucial for an owl to act on their environment

A Barn Owl’s Binocular Vision

Although owls and humans both have binocular vision, it has been unclear whether these birds of prey process information they collect from their environments like humans, because their brains aren’t as sophisticated

The finding of a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience sheds new light on a Barn Owl’s binocular vision.

Making Sense of the World Around Them

Scientists tested the ability of Barn Owls to find a moving target among various shifting backgrounds, a visual processing task earlier tested only in primates.

Owls group together different elements as they move in the same direction to make sense of the world around them

“Humans are not so different from birds as you may think,” says Yoram Gutfreund, a neuroscientist at Technion Israel Institute of Technology who led the study with colleagues from his university and RWTH Aachen University in Germany.

The research suggests that Barn Owls, with far simpler brains than humans and other primates, also group together different elements as they move in the same direction, to make sense of the world around them.

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