Superbowl

My guess here is that this is purely because he's human raised. While he is still physically an owl, his behaviors aren't going to be the same as that of a wild owl. He's going to be (typically) more social and pleasant around people because part of his brain thinks he is one. This is why we need to be cautious about imprinting on wild animals, especially young ones at rehab facilities. If they learn to be around us, they're not going to be effective or safe in the wild. And that is why I think Pip is looking so chill. This is the behavior he's been coached in all his short life, but he's still very close to technically being an adult bird.

Contrast this to my first owl I got to release yesterday. I'm sure part of it is since I'm new to handling owls, but I received nowhere near the cooperation the person in this photo did. Our clinic raised this Screech Owl from near the edge of the fledging stage where it would start exploring the tree outside the nest until now when it is basically full sized, fully feathered, and can fly just fine. We minimize contact time so it stays fully owl minded and sees us as a hopefully mild annoyance, but still an animal it wants nothing to do with.

When it came time to release it, I put on my gloves. They're not fancy raptor gloves, just ones like you'd buy for outdoor labor. Screeches are smaller than Pip here, so that is heavy duty enough protection. I reached in to try to grab him so I could take a nice photo op for the rescue social media, but it was having none of it. While he was napping and snacking a few hours earlier, now I was trying to take physical restraint of it, and though it's a bird of prey, it's still small enough many other things will eat it, so it now thinks that's what I'm trying to do. It immediately bit me a number of times and grabbed me with its feet and tried beating me with its wings and going all kinds of crazy and shrieking at me, basically how any of us would if someone busted into our home to drag us off to an unknown fate. I got it clear of the carrier and pretty much immediately let it go because I couldn't get the dexterity to secure its feet to keep it and me safe. It took off to a nearby tree, collected itself and looked around for a bit and then went on its way, no looking back.

So Pip could hurt this person, but the odds are a lot less, and the severity would likely also be less if it were to happen. This person, being allowed to hold this very rare owl, is also probably much more experienced at handling raptors and is able to read the bird and react to its body language much better than a novice like myself could. That's my thoughts anyway.

More specifically to the gloves themselves, they may actually be a little more interesting than you'd thought previously. I will share this snippet of an old post I made which also has a great link showing a number of different raptor gloves for different types of bird.

Gloves and jesses (the leather straps you will often see on their legs) are designed as safety devices for both the handlers and the birds. Keeping a bird, especially larger ones under supervised control keep the human from being hurt, and the bird from getting injured from getting tangled up in things or smacking into stuff, or just plain running off if it wants to give chase to something unexpectedly or gets freaked out. That means a lot of thought is put into glove design and selection, especially as you get to larger birds. Glove length, number of layers, and even type of leather can change based on what it designed to handle.

As to the gloves, their construction is to protect both the handler and the birds, so there are different construction methods for different birds.

The leather offers some protection from the talons of course, but it also withstands more pressure and the thickness spreads the force over a wider area to learn the potential damage. Skin will rip at IIRC about 50 psi, which even the small owls can do easily, especially at the tips of the talons.

There are bigger and thicker gloves for larger birds. They have increasing layers of leather to withstand the talons and the added pressure. Even with gloves though, I read numerous accounts of owls breaking people's fingers or making their arms go numb for a few days. A properly built and sized glove with keep the raptor feeling safe and secure so they feel the need to use less grip on the handler too.

Here's a good article with more details and pictures!

Raptor Glove Article

One cool fact I've learned more on since this old post is that the top of the line gloves are often made from kangaroo leather. It is very light but very puncture resistant at the same time, so you can get a larger, more layered gloves while not picking up even more weight you have to hold up while you have a 5-15 pound / 2-7 kg bird also on your arm.

This was probably around 10 paragraphs longer than you expected, so I hope it was interesting. I find it interesting, but this stuff only comes up so many places in conversation, so I will often end up taking all this pent up conversation out on you guys. 😇