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Meet the Largest Owl in the World — and One of the Most Endangered
Rebecca West
Most people in the States assume that the Great Horned Owl is the largest of all owl species, but they'd be wrong. Sure, it's considered the largest of all owls on this continent, but it is not, in fact, the largest of them all.
To give you a bit of insight, there are roughly 250 species of owls in the world. They live on every continent except Antarctica, and who can blame them for not making it their home as well?
Owls belong to a group of birds called Strigiformes. That group is divided into two smaller groups, known as families. The family called Tytonidae includes barn owls, which have heart-shaped faces. The second family, Strigidae, includes all other owls, most of which have round faces.
The Blakiston's Fish Owl is found in China, Japan, and Northeast Asia. It measures between 24 and 28 inches in height and has a wingspan of a whopping 60 to 76 inches! To help cope with the cold, its claws are fully feathered. While they are considered similar in appearance to the Eurasian Eagle Owl, they are slightly larger and quite a bit heavier.
A powerful predator by any standard, it is said that they are unable to fly silently, as most owls do, because they do not possess down-covered feathers. "Why?" you might ask. It has to do with diet and where that diet lives. They're not referred to as fish owls for fun. Fish live in H20, forcing them to swoop in and snatch their meals right out of the water, which separates them from many other owl species.
Like hawks and eagles, owls are called raptors, or birds of prey. In simple terms, it means that they use their incredibly sharp talons and curved or hooked bills to hunt, kill, and eat their unlucky victims.
Unlike the Great Horned Owl and the Eurasian Eagle Owl (the most widely distributed of the three), which are very close in size and strength, the Blakiston's Fish Owl is sadly listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Wildlife, with experts estimating that there are less than 200 of these rare birds left in Japan and an estimated 1,500 in Russia today.
