Jason E. Andersen

Bonus Fun Fact: Owls don’t have eyeballs.

I know what you’re thinking. They have eyes, yes, but they don’t have spherical eyeballs like humans do. Owl eyes, and the eyes of many other birds especially raptors, are shaped more like tubes rather than balls. These eyetubes (that’s not a real term) are kept in place by a bony structure called a sclerotic ring (which is a real term). Sclerotic rings wrap around the eye, effectively squeezing it like a belly band into a tube form and lock the eye in place. Speaking of that…

Bonus Bonus Fun Fact: Owls can’t move their eyes.

The sclerotic ring doesn’t allow the eye to rotate around inside it. Again, we’re talking eyetubes not eyeballs here. Humans can rotate their eyes within their sockets, on account of their spherical ball shape. Birds don’t have that luxury and have to rotate their whole head to get a full picture. The tradeoff is that birds, especially owls and the rest of the raptors, have exceptional far sightedness due to this feature. 

I learned this while surfing the interwebs (as you do) and came across a National Geographic article for youth education about owl eyes. It’s written for grades 3-10 so it’s right in my lane. This is the kind of quality adult education you can expect from my fun facts — stuff middle schoolers learn in class.