Superbowl

From Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center of Roanoke

We receive several Barred Owls (Strix varia) each year who must undergo an operation to remove an eye that is damaged beyond repair. They didn't exactly evolve to look both ways before diving for prey near roadsides... The Strix genus has existed in North America since the Pleistocene epoch, but our vehicles and roadways have only been around for about a century! This means that they are unfortunately frequent victims of vehicle strikes.

Often, they hit the side of a vehicle head on, resulting in head trauma and eye damage (and often far worse). Owls' huge, tube-shaped eyes make up nearly 60% of their heads, meaning that any damage to the head has a good chance of damaging the eyes, too!

For most birds, losing an eye is a death sentence. Losing your depth perception making flying harder, and reduces their ability to hunt or avoid predators. However, owls' keen sense of hearing is finely-tuned enough that they can detect the exact location of prey even under the cover of snow or darkness.

This means that an owl who is an experienced hunter has a good chance of adjusting to their new life with one eye. Younger, hatch-year owls tend to have a harder time adjusting to this handicap, but we have a series of successful rehabilitations for one-eyed owls during our tenure as a wildlife hospital.

With less than a week out from this patient's release, we have high hopes that this magnificently fluffy and resilient Barred Owl!

I read an article about owl eye removal and really learned a lot!

I'll skip the mildly gruesome stuff, but to remove the entire eye tends to cause a lot of potential problems, as the eyes make up so much of the head.

The lost weight of the eye can cause imbalance issues.

Not having the eye causes trouble with the ossicles (ring of bones surrounding the eye). The ossicles are there to support the huge eye, but without the eye, the bones lose their support and the face can deform.

There are prosthetic eyes for dogs, but they are round, not the light bulb shape of an owl's eye, so they don't really fit well, which can lead to infections.

The back of the eye helps direct sound into the ear canals, so eye removal can negatively affect hearing.

The optic nerves are very short, so the physical removal of one eye can easily damage the nerve of the other eye.

The eye structure also supports the septum, which is very delicate without the support offered by the eye, so that can lead to future injuries.

Due to all these reasons, only the globe of the eye (see my purple lines below) is removed, and then the eyelids are sewn up to keep everything sealed up.

Recovery time is about 10 days until stitches are removed, and the owl in the case study was eating and pooping normally the day after surgery and started immediately feeling better.