Through the night sky quilt,
White stillness
Hovoves,
Its trail trace
Against the cloud
soft marrow
Horizon tense tense –
A rodent eye without seeing,
measuring only shadows of
That does not break
The line.
Feather-Claaks,
sewn to the moon
silver breath,
resort to anything.
Hanging out of salts
suspended,
its invisible fall;
The hunter,
A ghost thread,
Wears of silence
In the arc
soft and
Looking at fields.
This poem is inspired by Recent researchwhich has found that barn owls have evolved to camouflage themselves in the moonlight.
Many predators are entrusting to remain invisible to successfully address their prey, but much of what we understand about camouflage is based on daytime stages that involve light and shadow. Night hunting presents its own challenges, especially in moonlight, where bright conditions can make predators more visible. Granero’s owls, with their surprising white lower parts, have bewildered scientists for a long time: how can such a conspicuous coloration help in the stealth? The previous interpretations suggested that their bright feathers terrorize the dam for freezing, but the real mechanics of how they remain without detecting at night had not been completely understood.
This investigation has revealed that the white plumage of Barn Boles acts as a form of camouflage against the skies illuminated by the moon. When modeling the moonlight, the sky, the ground and the owls themselves, the scientists discovered that in most of the conditions illuminated by the moon, the contrast between the owl and the sky remains under what the rodents can detect . This concealment is especially effective when the moon is high in the sky. The study shows that the white coloration reflects the moonlight in a way that combines the owl with its bottom, which allows it to approach the inadvertent dam. These findings challenge above theories and offer a fascinating vision of how animals adapt to their environments, even at night, highlighting the intricate relationship between light, vision and survival.
#hunters #gaze
