File:Otus asio (eastern screech owl).jpg

English: Otus asio (Linnaeus, 1758) - eastern screech owl (mount, CMC BT3296, Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA)

This species is also known as Megascops asio.

About 200 species of owls are known on Earth. They are small to somewhat large, predatory, mostly nocturnal birds having large, immobile eyes with binocular vision, flattened faces, remarkably flexible necks, and essentially soundless flight. Owls cannot move their eyes while watching moving objects - they must move their entire head. They can twist their heads over 180°! Owls are not sexually dimorphic in plumage, although there are slight body size differences between the sexes.

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Strigiformes, Strigidae

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Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.