Category: Birds
As their name implies, these owls live in burrows and are willing to either dig their own or inhabit those made by prairie dogs or other burrowing animals such as skunks and armadillos. They prefer to live in open areas and inhabit grasslands, rangelands, agricultural areas, deserts, and other similar habitats in North, Central, and South America. These industrious owls will actually collect mammal dung and place it in and around their burrows to attract beetles, which they then capture and devour.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Burrowing_Owl/lifehistory
Sugar, Honey Honey…
Too much sugar in the diet leads to obesity for humans: if we drink a can of soda pop (which is mostly high fructose corn syrup), the fructose is converted into fat by our livers; drink too many too often, and we end up gaining weight. But for hummingbirds, sugar isn’t something to eat sparingly: it is a source of power! Because of their simple, sugar rich diet, hummingbirds have adapted the ability to fuel their muscles with fructose without first converting it to fat - a feat unique among vertebrates. We do not yet know for sure how they process it so fast, though experiments have demonstrated that they do indeed possess this amazing capability. How fast, you ask? Their metabolisms are so extreme, a human-sized hummingbird would have to drink a can of soda pop every minute in order to gain weight!
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