Transcript:

Heres a program from our archives.Ambience, Great Horned OwlThat's the sound of a Great Horned Owl. When owls and other birds of prey are raised in captivity, they have to be trained to hunt before they can be released into the wild. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Soucy: Most of the behaviors of birds and of other wild creatures are innate. But there are things like learning to be proficient at what you do. Your survivability depends on becoming good at, if you're a mouse-catcher, catching mice. Even though that behavior is innate, you still need some practice.Leonard Soucy is President of the Raptor Trust, an organization which has participated in captive breeding programs for many birds of prey.Soucy: So in the wild, if you're an owl or hawk, you have a training period that you go through where you can learn imitatively from your parents. And if you do not score in any given time, capture prey, and are not self-efficient, the parents will help you along. They'll actually capture prey for the youngster even after it's left the nest and is hanging out with the family, if you will. So, we've come, long ago, to the realization that people cannot teach those kinds of behaviors as well as natural parents. So many of the hawks and owls that are kept here are kept as surrogates. So that when we receive an orphan or an injured youngster, it is given to a foster parent of its own species. And the hawk learns from the hawk, and the owl learns from an owl. They will socialize. They will imprint, the learned social behaviors are called, "imprinting". If it's done improperly, you've compromised the chance of that bird ever being wild.This archival program is part of our thirtieth anniversary celebration. If you want hear more, check out our podcast.