Owls have large forward-facing eyes, ears, beak, and conspicuous, circular feathers around the eyes called the facial disk.  Although owls have farsightedness, their eyes are fixed in their sockets.  Thus the whole head has to be turned to change the direction of vision.  It can turn its head up to 270 degrees in either direction.

Owls are farsighted, and their eyes can`t see things more than a few inches away.  However, their vision is excellent, especially in dim light.

Many owls can detect sound and hunt even in total darkness.  Facial disks help collect sound from rodents and transmit it to the ear.

Apart from their similarity in appearance, they are more closely related to whippoorwills and other bucks or caprimulkiformus than to rats and other nocturnal reptiles.  Some taxonomists include nightjars in the same order as owls.  (See Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy).Owls' strong claws and sharp beaks help them tear their prey to pieces before eating.  Their sound-absorbing wings and dull plumage enable them to fly silently and invisibly.  Its behavior in scooping up indigestible bones, scales, and feathers of food helps scientists study their feeding habits.  Some companies collect and sell these orbs to schools to help students analyze during biology lessons.

Owl eggs are almost spherical in shape.  Owls lay anywhere from a few to a dozen eggs, depending on their species.  Their nests are crude, found in trees, underground arches, caves, etc.Among the many animal characters depicted in ancient Panchatantra stories in India, the owl is an important one.  However, in Indian culture, the screeching of an owl is considered frightening and a bad omen.

While crows and many other birds are highly intelligent, owls were traditionally associated with intelligence and the goddess Athena.  In the writing styles of the ancient Egyptians, the owl figure was used to represent the "m" sound.  However, to prevent it from coming alive and attacking, its legs were drawn with broken legs.  In Japanese culture, the owl was considered a symbol of death and the sight of it was considered unlucky.  In Hopi culture, these were considered dirty and bring trouble.  In 2003, in a cross-cultural review of textbook entries for students in American schools, it was decided to remove scary animals such as snakes and scorpions, as well as stories about owls and question passages.  The decision was made because questions about owls might scare away students from the American Indian culture of the Southwest and distract them from the exam.The true owls or common owls (family Strigidae) are one of the two generally accepted owl families.  Another is Barn Owls (Tytonidae).  This large family contains 189 living species in about 25 genera.  They are found on all continents except Antarctica.Species within this family vary greatly in size.  The smallest owl in the family, the elf owl is only one-hundredth the size of the largest owls in the family, the Eurasian eagle-owl and Blackston's fish-owl.  Each species of owl has a largely similar body structure.[1]  They typically have large heads, short tails, and rounded facial circles around the eyes.  All owls in this family live in trees, except for a few species such as the barn owl.  They hunt for their food by flying.  The wings are large, broad and long.  Like most raptors, most male owls are smaller than their female counterparts.[2]

As they are bivalves, it is not possible to differentiate between males and females by the color of their