From Melvin Laureano Nature & Wildlife

A Great Gray Owl delicately testing the strength of a pine tree’s tip before settling-these large owls often perch high to scan and listen for prey below.

Mountainview County, AB

The world’s largest owl by overall length, the Great Grey is mostly air.

  • Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world
    4·
    8 days ago

    This has been studied and proven incorrect

    bird skeletons can appear to be thin and delicate, yet contribute just as much to total body mass as do the skeletons of terrestrial mammals.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2880151/

    Next day edit - Akshually this was just meant to be an interesting reply, hopefully it was well received. I was tired and busy yesterday, sorry if this came across as blunt/rude.

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
      2·
      5 days ago

      From an engineering perspective, if you take a hollow pipe and a solid bar of the same weight and length, the hollow one will be stiffer.

      At first I thought that meant they’d likely need heavier bones to withstand the flying stress if they were solid. But solid bones aren’t bone all the way, I don’t think marrow doubles as load bearing material.

      So perhaps the difference is all in respiratory capacity and weight distribution.