Owls hunt by homing in on the tiny noises that their prey make. They do this by triangulating on the animal’s location with its ears. They create a “sound picture to navigate through the forest. This picture includes noises made by animals, leaves blowing across the ground, and wind moving through the trees.

The owl’s dish-shaped face focuses and receives sounds, then directs them to its ears. Their ears are irregularly placed on their head, one is higher up on the head than the other. Because of the positioning of its ears, an owl can triangulate the location of the sound much more accurately than a human can.  

The owl’s cortex processes auditory information in much the same way ours does visual mapping. As a result, owls can accurately locate a mouse under 3 feet of snow by homing in on only the heartbeat and can hear its footsteps from very far away. How fascinating an owl’s world seems to be.