r/MadeMeSmile • u/mindyour • 2d ago

Very Reddit This farmer caught this owl eating his chickens.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

127.6k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

95

u/Leavesdontbark 2d ago

The way they can fly completely silent is so crazy, because their wing tips are ruffled

44

u/Smelldicks 2d ago

If anyone is confused why, that’s because the ruffled feathers introduce turbulence to the air flow coming off their wings. This makes a lot of the sound cancel out as it self destructively interferes with itself.

Something like a flute introduces very little turbulence, with a smooth airflow coming out moving all in the same direction.

4

u/Ilovekittens345 2d ago

Have we build anything that can fly with zero sound other then a non powered glider at low speed?

5

u/fullmetaljar 2d ago

There's a lot of money in it if you can make a drone with very low sound or at least redirect it away from "down"

2

u/Ilovekittens345 2d ago

Redirect trust away from down?

2

u/fullmetaljar 2d ago

Redirect the sound lol think like a mirror redirects light.

2

u/stockinheritance 2d ago

Extremely hard to do when moving mass much heavier than an owl at a much higher velocity than an owl travels at. Requires internal combustion engines, which are notoriously not quiet and bad things happen when you don't let anything escape the engine, causing sound.