Who Gives a Hoot About Weight?

Here's an interesting study posted at Science Daily today:
Male Owls Pitch Their Hoots To Advertise Body Weight To Competitors

So, let me get this straight. Owls are active at night, well known fact, when vision is often impaired even for them. As a result they must depend upon their hearing for vital clues about potential opponents. This obviously makes sense.

Heavier owls have calls that are lower in pitch tones than lighter owls.

Now comes the interesting parts.

When a territorial owl is challenged by a high pitched call he responds quickly to the challenge, apparently realizing he may outweigh his foe. When he is challenged by a lower pitched call than his own, he may respond by sitting still and only making an answering call. Additionally he tries to lower the pitch of his own call to make it seem as if he is heavier than he is. Now he might be thinking, “This opponent has got the weight advantage on me but if I don’t go rushing off to meet him and instead respond with a low call of my own, he may just go away and leave me alone.”

So, does this mean that the scops owls in this study are cowardly bullies ready to rush off into the fray when they assume they have the advantage, yet try to bluff their way out of a confrontation when they know they are the disadvantaged?

Then there is this proposed follow-up study:

Loïc Hardouin who recently completed a PhD on acoustic communication and territoriality in owls. "The next step is to see whether females use these quality cues when they choose their mating partner."

Sounds like many a bar on Saturday night.

(As I was getting ready to post this I rechecked the article and almost laughed when I realized these were French owls. “Cowardly bullies,” indeed.