The northern white-faced owl (''Ptilopsis leucotis'') is a species of

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

in the family

Strigidae The true owls or typical owls (family (biology), family Strigidae) are one of the two generally accepted families of owls, the other being the barn owls and bay owls (Tytonidae). This large family comprises 230 living or recently extinct species ...

. The southern white-faced owl (''P. granti'') was formerly included in this species and the two were known as the white-faced scops-owl. It is found in a band across Africa between the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

and the

Equator The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

. It occurs in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and Uganda.

Fight-or-flight response

This owl has a rather notable defense mechanism. When faced with a similar-sized predator (like another owl slightly larger than it), the bird flares its wings to appear larger. When faced with something much larger than itself (such as an eagle), it pulls its feathers inwards, elongates its body, and narrows its eyes to thin slits. It is thought that it uses this ability to camouflage itself, and it shares the ability with relatives like the

African scops owl The African scops owl (''Otus senegalensis'') is a small owl which is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. Taxonomy William Swainson first described the species in 1837 from a specimen collected in Senegal, and initially assigned it to the now d ...

. Many different types of owls have some ability to adopt a "concealing posture", also known by the German word ''Tarnstellung'', in which they squeeze and thin their body to look like a broken tree branch, and some types may also narrow their eyes to slits and fold a wing sideways across their chest in a Dracula-like manner to hide the lighter-colored feathers on their underparts. Such behavior has also been documented in

Eastern screech owl The eastern screech owl (''Megascops asio'') or eastern screech-owl, is a small typical owl, owl that is relatively common in Eastern North America, from Mexico to Canada. This species resides in most types of woodland habitats across its range, ...

s in a natural setting reacting to threats.

In popular culture

A member of this species named "Popo-chan" was the subject of a Japanese television show, during which the species' concealing posture was demonstrated.Popo-chan is housed in a Japanese bird and flower park called Kakegawa Kachoen which has a Japanese-language websit
here
with an English translation of the page by google foun
here
(the park also has a
English-language website
which mentions "Popo the White-faced Scops Owl

but does not identify the precise species). In the "Here are the highlights" section of the translated version there is a line translated as "famous in Japan in the mimicry Ow

o

, and the "Giant African Scops" link takes readers to a page on ''Ptilopsis leucotis'', the scientific name for the Northern White-faced Owl.

References

* Sinclair, Ian & Ryan, Peter (2003) ''Birds of Africa south of the Sahara'', Struik, Cape Town.

External links

* Northern white-faced owl
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q126483

northern white-faced owl The northern white-faced owl (''Ptilopsis leucotis'') is a species of owl in the family Strigidae. The southern white-faced owl (''P. granti'') was formerly included in this species and the two were known as the white-faced scops-owl. It is fo ...

Birds of prey of Sub-Saharan Africa

Taxonomy articles created by Polbot