what were barn owls called before they invented the barn?

Question

pondering some more as you do - which came first, the barn or the barn owl??

Answer 1

owls

Answer 2

Good question.

They have always, you may be surprised, been called barn owls and it was the barn that was named after them. For centuries the barn owl had nowhere to live and travelled the countryside living on the back of cows, in rain barrels or under the bridge.

One day a wise European took notice of these nomadic birds and felt sorry for them. So he stayed awake all night and invented a great structure in which they could live. He stocked the loft with hay as to attract mice so that the barn owl would have something to eat. Lo and behold, it worked. The barn owl moved in and had a permanent residence.

The wise inventor called it a 'hay house' at first as 'mouse house' tended to scare the ladies away and the inventor didn't get many dates. Soon, the idea of giving the barn owl a place to live became very popular with the ladies. His neighbors realized they had to compete and before you knew it, hay houses sprung up across the countryside because generally the ladies felt sorry for the poor barn owls living in rain barrels all the time. Eventually the hay houses evolved and the farmers maximized their use by moving in other animals in like cows, horses and chickens. The barn owl was content to share his house with them. However, having the biggest barn was no longer an attractive notion to the ladies with all these new animals mooing and stinking up the place.

The hay house went through various name changes over the years such as 'cow crib, pig pad, and rooster booster.' But the shortest and easiest reference to the hay house was 'barn,' (usually making reference to the bird and not the building). In a popular vote in 1604, it was decided almost unamimously that this new style of building would be named after the barn owl, and was christened the 'barn.'

Soon, other inventors designed new and exciting domiciles for other animals and honored them with names like 'chicken coop, dog house,' and 'fish tank.' Today, the barn remains one of the most successful inventions to give a homeless bird a house, and is still considered a great place to pick up 'chicks.'

Answer 3

The real question is "does anyone really give a hoot"? Good question though and I doubt anyone ever said there goes a "Tyto alba"(their scientific name).

What is interesting, albeit sad is how short they live, only two years on average.

They are excellent hunters, gliding in silently, performing most of their hunting at night when their keen vision and excellent hearing make them deadly.

Striking in appearance with a unique heart-shaped face, they are found scattered across America, with a heavy concentration in California and surrounding states.

I believe the term “barn owl was originally given to these beauties in the early 1700s by Giovanni Scopoli. The own made its home in barn lifts and church steeples, they’re at home in most secluded spaces. They are also known as the Monkey-faced Owl, Ghost Owl, Church Owl, Death Owl, Hissing Owl, Hobgoblin or Hobby Owl, Golden Owl, Silver Owl, White Owl, Night Owl, Rat Owl, Scritch Owl, Screech Owl, Straw Owl, Barnyard Owl and Delicate Owl..

Not sure which one to pick, but assuredly they had a name, even before the barn; now then, if your question was… when was the first barn, that’s an entirely different matter.

Answer 4

grass owls is the correct answer. not all barn owls live in barns it just so happens that they provide quite good nest sites and the corn and maize held in these barns attract small rodents which is what barn owls eat. before they would live in grass land and nest in trees.
We still have grass owls all over the world and they look jut like barn owls only with slight differences, eg black markings, different shaped bodies.

Answer 5

Barn owls were invented by ornithologist and inventor Julius T. Barn in 1712, so the question is moot.

Answer 6

barn owl were called a numer of different owls ie ghost owl or white owl. they got their names the barn owl because that is where they were most comonly found their latin name is tyto alba

Answer 7

Barn owls were gypsies before barns were invented.

Answer 8

They called barns,barns because barn owls lived in them!

Answer 9

Buy-My-Big-Issue-Owl

Answer 10

hobo owls? I didn't know owls invented the barn. Cool!

Answer 11

It looks to me like the scientific name was assigned in 1769, and barns existed then. I would speculate that prior to the 1700s when people were organizing the animals taxonomically, there was no official name, and different groups of people who lived in different areas (and spoke different languages) probably had different local names for it.