I went to a falconry centre a while back and the guy had an owl that could fly perfectly well, but it’d just run around on its stumpy little legs instead. Nowhere near the smarts of the kestrel that pissed off for several hours instead of participating in the falconry show.
I'm a falconer. Basically no one uses owls for falconry because they have poor generalization intelligence. They have a really hard time transferring knowledge from one situation to another. So you get them flying to you inside and they are nailing it, then you move outside and it has no idea what to do. Every new situation needs to be trained. They are fine for shows and stuff when they are doing the same thing over and over again but constantly putting them in new situations like hunting would do is a recipe for disaster. A "lot"(maybe a dozen a year in US lol) of falconers try to use owls but very few are successful with them.
How so? I thought they're great hunters?
Big eyes -> no room for brain
when it looks at a crossword, it thinks it can solve it. but it can't.
(courtesy: the taskmaster's assistant)
Compared to say, a crow, an owl is a certified fucking moron
I went to a falconry centre a while back and the guy had an owl that could fly perfectly well, but it’d just run around on its stumpy little legs instead. Nowhere near the smarts of the kestrel that pissed off for several hours instead of participating in the falconry show.
Let me ask you this, do you run all the time? You can do that and It's faster, but why'd you choose to walk slowly most of the time?
If human can fly, I doubt we would do that all the time as it's way more energy intensive and less durable.
I think those owls are up to something.
I'm a falconer. Basically no one uses owls for falconry because they have poor generalization intelligence. They have a really hard time transferring knowledge from one situation to another. So you get them flying to you inside and they are nailing it, then you move outside and it has no idea what to do. Every new situation needs to be trained. They are fine for shows and stuff when they are doing the same thing over and over again but constantly putting them in new situations like hunting would do is a recipe for disaster. A "lot"(maybe a dozen a year in US lol) of falconers try to use owls but very few are successful with them.