Meeting Abstract
Owls are well known for their nearly soundless flight, in comparison to the wing sounds of other birds. Owls have evolved wing and tail features, including a comb-like structure on the leading edge of the wing, a ‘velvet’ in between adjacent wing feathers and tail feathers, and fringed feather margins that are associated with sound reduction. Recent studies have used techniques such as beamforming and computational fluid dynamics models to understand how these wing structures suppress sound in flight. The stated intent of these studies is to discover whether any evolved features of owl wings may have a design basis with technological application to noisy human devices such as drones, windmills or trains. Neurobiologists have extensively studied owl hearing as a model for sound localization. The purpose of this symposium is to bring together biologists and engineers to discuss ongoing research in ‘animal aeroacoustics’, the study of how animal flight produces an acoustic signature, and its biological context.
