Billy I thought of you when I saw this....

[mortatone]

Photo taken recently by a person that lives in my neighborhood. We are situated on the St Johns River near Sanford Florida. I don't know what lead to this level of trust but we have numerous owls of this type in the area.

[GuitarBilly]

That's a female barred owl. They're one of the most aggressive owls so I'm surprised to see this. My guess is this person has been taking care of this owl since birth and the owl imprinted on her.

Owls do imprint very easily. When I was volunteering at the Raptor Center, we used to put on owl masks when we were feeding the owls because if they imprint on humans they can't be released back into the wild.

I'd still be careful with a barred owl though.

[IndyWS6]

Wow...
Owls are cool.
Nature is cool.
Getting close to nature is cool - until nature rips your face off. Big, powerful creatures...

[TurboPablo]

Those talons are no joke.

[GuitarBilly]

Wow...
Owls are cool.
Nature is cool.
Getting close to nature is cool - until nature rips your face off. Big, powerful creatures...

Yeah, contrary to popular depiction, owls are not very wise. They have small brains relative to their size and it seems like every inch of it is dedicated to hunt and kill. They're the most successful hunter of all animals, with a kill rate of 70-85% of their attacks depending on the owl species (sharks in comparison, have a 25% strike success rate, lions are around 15%). But other than that, there's not a lot of cognitive intelligence there. They're just empty headed killing machines lol

Of all the raptors we worked with at the center, barred owls (and owls in general) were always the most aggressive.
Eagles, hawks, falcons etc are actually smart (for a bird) and once they realize you're not there to hurt them they're quite friendly and cooperative.
With owls, it was a constant struggle not to get attacked even with animals that were there for weeks.

If this lady raised this owl from birth, there's a chance the owl sees her as a food provider and won't attack her but I wouldn't trust it. The vast majority of injuries to humans caused by owls is by this species.

Remember a while ago there was something on the news about owls swooping down on people at a park and they even made a funny road sign about it? Those were barred owls.

[IndyWS6]

Awesome - cool info.

I looks at that picture and wonder what would happen if someone startled the owl. I'm guessing her shoulder would get shredded...

[GuitarBilly]

Oh definitely. Here's another owl story:

We used to wear Kevlar gloves to get the birds in/out of cages for the vets to work on them and we were always told to clench our hands into a fist so they couldn't grab our fingers.

One of the girls volunteering there once let her finger out for a second while handling a Great Horned Owl and the owl immediately grabbed her finger and started to squeeze. Within seconds, her arm started to turn purple because her blood circulation was getting cut off - through the Kevlar glove!
It took several minutes for the owl to let go and the chick was about to pass out. We were trying to distract the owl with food, noises, lights to see if it would let go but nothing was working.
We were about to shoot the owl dead when it finally decided let go of her hand lol

[IndyWS6]

Jesus... Don't mess with wild animals. Survival is a singular focus.

"It's just a bird". Um, yeah, so was a pterodactyl

[GuitarBilly]