After doing some more reading about our Owl of the Year, it seems that the name is becoming a bit outdated.
After genetic testing around 2010, it showed there was enough genetic diversity to split the species into 2 different ones, so now we have the Northern White Faced and (surprise surprise) the Southern White Faced Owl.
The difference is only slightly visual, with the Southern usually being a little darker and more streaky in pattern, but various birds are going to look different, and with different lighting in every photo, it’s not that easy to pick them apart that way.
With genetic testing becoming cheaper, we’re learning a lot about what we can’t observe by other methods previously available. I tried reading a scientific paper about the original results of the testing of the White Faced Scops, and all I could make is it was the % variation of their results between the 2 groups of samples was enough to recommend the species be split. It seemed very interesting how they analyze these things, so I’ll have to learn more about how people look at genetic diversity and genetic distance so I can read deeper into these things.
Northern
Southern
I don’t much see the difference, other than there different photos of different owls. Do you? 🤷♂️
One is cute. The other is also cute?
One is 5% more adorable, the other is 5% more charming.
And neither is a fugly duck!
Something tells me even FuglyDuck is neither of those things either!
It’s all misdirection. 😉
Superb!
To me it looks like there may be a slight variation in eye colour with the Northern’s being slightly more red. That could be chalked up to lighting though.
This is why I just read the caption! If it doesn’t say, I don’t post it. 😜
I’m super good at paying attention lol
Not a bad trait for a doctor to have! 🤓
The Northern is chill and the southern is alert. Maybe they just differ in their traits. /s
Considering researchers only discovered differences between them, when looking very, very closely, the differences found may be hard to spot anyway.
I wish I could have understood the paper better. It has a chart showing percentages of diversity between species of the same genus, but it was both too complicated for my brain’s current level at understanding geneticists, plus the image also got too blurry before I could zoom enough to read it. ☺️
I’ll have to learn more. All the science is really amazing.
One of the most unfair things in life, is our relative tiny lifespan, compared to the amount of things we can learn.
I’d love to see and hear it all if I could, but it’s so amazing all the knowledge we have available now at our fingertips. I’d never have even dreamed of seeing all these papers available, but now we have so much we can access anytime for free. We may not be able to learn it all, but at least people as a whole have essentially limitless collective memory that will make going forward so much better. ❤️
Such a worthy winner. Truly a beautiful owl.
It was already the Transformer Owl, but now it transformed into another species!
I love the moustache🥰 so cute!
That face in general is just so good!
The shape, the tufts, the eyes, the stache, it’s got it all!
A real beauty!
A two for one champion?!
That was one of the concerns I had with the winner getting the icon image. If it was Snowy, I didn’t know whether to pick the girl or boy since they look different.
Even with the banner, I couldn’t decide so I told dragonfly to pick whatever so I didn’t have to decide. They picked an inside with both, so nobody had to choose after all!
