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Two burrowing owls peering out from a leafy den site

True owls

There are two families of owls, and this one is the larger of the two, with over ten times more species in it than the Tytonidae or barn owl family. Most of those species live in forests.

Scientific name: Strigidae

Rank: Family

Common names:

Typical owls

Distribution

Map showing the distribution of the True owls taxa

The shading illustrates the diversity of this group - the darker the colour the greater the number of species. Data provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

About

True owl or Typical owl (family Strigidae) are one of the two generally accepted families of Owls, the other being the barn owls (Tytonidae). The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy unites the Caprimulgiformes with the owl order; here, the typical owls are a subfamily Strigidae. This is unsupported by more recent research (see Cypselomorphae for details), but the relationships of the owls in general are still unresolved. This large family comprises around 189 living species in 25 genera. The typical owls have a cosmopolitan distribution and are found on every continent except Antarctica.

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Classification

  1. Life
  2. Animals
  3. Vertebrates
  4. Birds
  5. Owls
  6. True owls

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