The evolution of an “owl‐like” auditory system in harriers: Anatomical evidence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hearing is crucial for predators to detect hidden prey. Owls are perhaps the best example of predators with extreme auditory abilities and anatomical specializations that enhance prey localization by sound alone. Such specializations include enlarged acoustic meatus, asymmetrical ears, and enlarged auditory brain nuclei. Harriers (Circus spp.), medium-sized diurnal hawks, have similar sound-based hunting strategies and abilities to localize sound sources like owls, but whether they have the same anatomical adaptations remains unknown. We provide a quantitative analysis of the harrier's auditory system, combining histology and microCT scanning to analyze both brain and skull anatomy. Harriers differ greatly from other hawks in having enlarged acoustic meatus and expanded auditory brainstem nuclei (nucleus magnocellularis and nucleus laminaris). These are up to 3× and 12× larger, respectively, than in other hawks and are comparable in size to those of owls. However, harriers do not show other traits found in owls such as obvious ear asymmetry, an enlarged endosseous cochlear duct, or an expansion of other auditory nuclei that are enlarged in owls. These data suggest the ability of harriers to localize sound sources arises, in part, from the expansion of two auditory brainstem nuclei that are crucial to calculating interaural timing differences and determining the azimuthal location of sounds. The extent to which harriers can also accurately calculate the elevational component of a sound remains uncertain, but based on our analyses, it seems unlikely that they are as accurate as asymmetrically eared owls. We conclude that the anatomy of the harrier auditory system is "owl-like," and their ability to accurately locate prey via auditory cues is likely enhanced by their unique hunting behavior.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".