this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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For owls that are superb.
US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
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I know that some animals can feel, but not to which degree and if all of them can. Bugs and fish being certified to have feelings on par with or even more… extreme? in-depth? not sure what word to use—would be news to me.
This community is probably weighted towards people with high empathy for non-human creatures, people who might be more likely to seek out information about the emotional capabilities of such creatures. This is not a bad thing, but it would explain how people do not seem to know what you seem to deem obvious.
Exactly. We can tell our pets miss us when we go away for a bit, but to what degree? What do they understand about us coming and going? They can like and dislike things, but can they love or hate something?
And after thinking about this a bit more, we'll get impressed with cetaceans and primates fairly universally, attributing them basic levels of early human intelligence. A smaller group will recognize things like pigs, octopuses, or corvids being pretty darn smart.
Learning more about how their minds work will hopefully improve our relationships with these animals in the future, and anything we learn is a good thing.
Back in Ye Olden Tymes, I took a course in which we were shown a film about communications in animals. In the film, an orca mother was separated from her calf and swam around bonking her head on the walls of the tank.
I shit thee not, the film asked the question, “what could the animal be doing?” And no, gentle reader, it was not asked ironically. Afterwards the professor professed that animals do not communicate as we do, and there are good reasons to believe they do not have the emotions we do.
Reader, I say unto y’all, that be some bullshit. But apparently the group mind is still not up to speed such that science showing fish have preferences is considered headline-making.