Owls ought to be capable to rotate their heads a full 360 levels, in keeping with an evaluation of the birds’ skeletons and muscular tissues – however some researchers nonetheless have their doubts.

It has lengthy been identified that owls have extraordinarily cell necks. The birds have been recorded turning their heads entirely upside down, as an illustration, or rotating them through 270 degrees whereas holding their our bodies stationary. However Aleksandra Panyutina at Tel Aviv College in Israel and her colleague Alexander Kuznetsov, an unbiased researcher, suspect an owl’s neck is extra versatile nonetheless.

The 2 researchers obtained the our bodies of eight deceased owls – belonging to a complete of 5 totally different species – from two educational institutes in Russia. They then took CT scans of every chicken as they rotated its head.

This revealed that owls depend on two methods throughout a head flip. First, they rotate a number of the joints between the bones of their neck, which permits them to show their heads as much as 126 levels. Secondly, they bodily twist their backbone, giving it a spiral staircase-like look. Though this coiling severely contorts the backbone, Panyutina and Kuznetsov found the movement doesn’t injury the bones, ligaments or muscular tissues within the owl’s neck – even when the top turns in a full circle.

As such, Panyutina is assured that “reside owls can carry out a 360-degree flip”.

Michael Habib on the Pure Historical past Museum of Los Angeles County, who has researched a number of the variations that permit owls to perform extreme head turns, says the brand new research is “very cool”. However he doesn’t suppose we are going to ever see an owl’s head rotate utterly round.

“They have been asking whether or not there’s something within the bone and muscle that will essentially stop a 360-degree flip, they usually discovered that the reply is, considerably surprisingly, no,” says Habib. However he thinks different anatomical options will in all probability forbid such turns. Critically, Habib says, the nerves operating up the neck can be broken throughout a 360-degree spin, doubtlessly leaving an owl unable to fly for a number of days whereas the nerves healed. “Nerves don’t like being stretched,” he says.

Nevertheless, Panyutina disagrees this could be an issue, notably for nerves, such because the vagus nerve, that cross excessive of the neck muscular tissues. Their placement means these nerves wouldn’t stretch because the bones beneath the muscular tissues twisted and contorted. “The vagus runs freely over the muscular tissues and so simply finds a shorter means throughout excessive turns,” she says.

To settle the matter, researchers could need to carry out experiments with residing owls. Panyutina proposes coaching the birds to deal with a selected goal, after which inserting them on a rotating platform to see whether or not they can retain deal with the goal by a 360-degree flip.