I saw this photo online last week, but I had no idea what the exact story was.
Barred owls are pretty common around here. They are actually quite a bit more common than great horned owls, which actually kill barred owls when they move into their territories.
We call them “hoot owls.” That’s because they are most famously known for their hooting call that goes like this:
“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?” (The “all” is kind of guttural “aw” sound.)
I have known that great horned owls eat cats.
But I didn’t know that barred owls would do the same.
I wanted to know the full story behind this photo, but I didn’t find out until this morning.
The Daily Mail reports that this photo was taken in Minnesota. However, it doesn’t report whether it was taken by camera trap or by a lucky photographer.
I don’t know if the owl actually got to eat the cat, but this ought to be a nice little warning:
Don’t let your cats roam, especially at night.
The coyotes might get them.
So might the fishers.
And there are at least two species of owl in North America that have a taste for pussy cat.
Oooo. Make me want to stay in at night. I don’t suppose that owls attack dogs. They look scary.
They can, but most people are smart enough not to let small dogs roam at night.
Owls will have a go at small dogs. So will Harris hawks, probably because they are accustomed to hunt in groups, so can take on bigger game.
Elizabeth
If the dog is small, it’s at risk! My barn cats are smart & careful & my guardian dogs are aggressive to large birds, so I’m not too worried. But I never put the little dog out at night without making sure the big dogs are with her. Coyotes will take cats & small dogs, too.
I would bet on the cat being dropped shortly after this picture was taken; with an eagle owl it might be different though.
Yeah. A great horned owl is an eagle owl. They are infamous cat hunters. They also kill skunks.
A lot of our large owl species will take skunks–their sense of smell is rudimentary at best. I’d often wondered whether they (or large hawks) would take cats–that’s a lot of weight for an owl to carry after all–this answers that question. I suspect that any of those new “teacup” breeds of cats and dogs (or small kittens/puppies) would be easy pickings for any of our large birds of prey though.
Interestingly, a few decades back, a Cooper’s Hawk took a Blue Jay in our backyard. One of the local barn cats attacked the hawk and took the Jay for its own. I found that very surprising. I would have thought the hawk was large and fierce enough to at least defend its prey.
massugu,
Birds of pray, regardless of size, are not in their element on the ground and are thus vulnerable to even the smallest dog or cat. It’s almost always not even a contest.
This is why I keep telling my neighbors here in MT how dangerous it is for their small pets to rove! It was a rough late summer here with hazardous air quality for most of a month from the half-million-plus-acre Mustang Complex fire; I know many deer hunters and they have all said hunting was abysmal this fall. I found what everyone I showed the photo to says are itty bitty black bear cub tracks two feet from a construction site (active) next to a physical therapy office half a block from a 4-complex apartment neighborhood that is jammed with cats, tiny-to-small dogs, and itty bitty kids. We have at least two mammals (fox and coyote) known for taking cats in the area, plus several large buteo hawks and golden as well as bald eagles and definitely one or more of the big owl species whose calls I don’t know well. The manager’s cat is black and is the most frequent roamer; maybe now that we just got about 4 inches of snow she’ll take my advice! A large owl or other bird of prey might not be able to carry a cat, especially one struggling at the time, but a hungry enough one might very well be able & willing to kill a cat and fill up to the limit of its flight capacity before abandoning such a kill. Around here, after a tough summer and scanty fall–so bad there is nearly no fruit left for the spring thaw on the ornamental tree outside my window, which for the past 5 winters has held almost all its fruit until then–my money is on extremely hungry carnivores & omnivores cutting nobody’s roaming pets any slack at all.
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My cat Chuck was snatched up by a tiger owl that looks to be about as big as a small dog, has a very deep hoot, wingspan is at least 5 feet. We heard the whole thing, he didn’t make a sound at all, we could only hear our cat beign choked off and dragged away.
If you live in Arizona and you love your cat, don’t make the mistake I did.
That’s the first time I’ve ever heard them called “tiger owls” before. We call them great horned owls on this side of the continent.
We have them here, and they kill barred owls and skunks. They do take quite a few cats.
This species is found all over the Americas, so if you let your cat roam at night, it might wind up in their talons.
I’m sorry to hear about your loss.
Cats are a lot more vulnerable to predation than we assume.