What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman

What an Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into owls--the most elusive of birds--and why they exert such a hold on human imagination

For millennia, owls have captivated and intrigued us. Our fascination with these mysterious birds was first documented more than thirty thousand years ago in the Chauvet Cave paintings in southern France. With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls are often a symbol of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. But what does an owl really know? And what do we really know about owls? Though our fascination goes back centuries, scientists have only recently begun to understand in deep detail the complex nature of these extraordinary birds. Some two hundred sixty species of owls exist today, and they reside on every continent except Antarctica, but they are far more difficult to find and study than other birds because they are cryptic, camouflaged, and mostly active in the dark of night.

Jennifer Ackerman illuminates the rich biology and natural history of these birds and reveals remarkable new scientific discoveries about their brains and behavior. She joins scientists in the field and explores how researchers are using modern technology and tools to learn how owls communicate, hunt, court, mate, raise their young, and move about from season to season. We now know that the hoots, squawks, and chitters of owls follow sophisticated and complex rules, allowing them to express not just their needs and desires but their individuality and identity. Owls duet. They migrate. They hoard their prey. Some live in underground burrows; some roost in large groups; some dine on black widows and scorpions.

Ackerman brings this research alive with her own personal field observations about owls and dives deep into why these birds beguile us. What an Owl Knows is an awe-inspiring exploration of owls across the globe and through human history, and a spellbinding account of their astonishing hunting skills, communication, and sensory prowess. By providing extraordinary new insights into the science of owls, What an Owl Knows pulls back the curtain on the nature of the world's most enigmatic group of birds.

For than three decades, JENNIFER ACKERMAN has been writing about science, nature, and human biology. Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body; Ah-Choo: The Unusual Life of Your Common Cold; Chance in the Mansion of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity; and Notes from the Sea are among her most recent works. Ackerman has written for Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, and many other magazines. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship in Nonfiction, a Bunting Fellowship, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. The Sloan Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593298886
ISBN 10	0593298888
Title	What an Owl Knows
Author	Jennifer Ackerman
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Penguin Putnam Inc
Year published	2023-06-13
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.