Snowy Owls carrying their young in flight? (2 Viewers)

[ChincoteagueBirder]

Can Snowy Owls carry their young on their backs in flight? I recently saw a video showing this, but wondered if it was some kind of AI thing.

 

[foresttwitcher]

Lots of the same video if you search - very obviously AI & not possible in reality.

 

[WACCOE]

Can Snowy Owls carry their young on their backs in flight? I recently saw a video showing this, but wondered if it was some kind of AI thing.

I saw that it's obviously AI there's lots of similar videos,it's getting harder and harder to tell what is real and isn't.

 

[Scott98]

The Harry Potter movies were like a curse on the Snowy Owl population I'm afraid

 

[kb57]

There seems to be a proliferation of AI-generated bird images and videos on social media, and snowy owls seem to be right up there as favoured subjects. I came across a similar 'snowy owl and cute chick' image on Bluesky this morning which had got 1000s of likes and loads of 'aw how cute' level of comments - a quick Google image search found the same picture on TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest etc.
AI also seems to have notched up a level of sophistication from generating obviously 'fantasy' images of birds, often with improbable anatomy, to those which render accurate plumage details of real species onto images of them in improbable locations doing unlikely things. An example of this was a video of a group of cute-ified eastern bluebirds 'cuddling up' to each other on a twig - it looked like an AI generated sequence of behaviour that had mapped accurate eastern bluebird plumage onto the birds.
I find it quite depressing that these images generate more public engagement than images of real birds, and the vast number of people responding to them appear to have no idea they aren't real birds and real behaviours.

 

[dantheman]

See also this older thread -

AI and rare birds

Earlier today on Facebook a post was shared to a group I belong to, of some horses on a beach in the outer banks next to a giant sea turtle. It was an awesome image and I can get why it was shared, especially if your knowledge of sea turtles was limited. However, most people quickly came to the...

www.birdforum.net

I have a feeling there was another thread with some ai hybrid ducks confusing people, and also a thread by someone (@Mono ?) posting up images they'd created in an ai generator, with an intent to track how good ai became at creating such images down the line ...

 

[dantheman]

Here's the first thread at any rate -

what the... photos from the web of not-Baer´s pochards- location unknown

https://nepaldesk.com/bird/baers-pochard any ideas what this is supposed to be?

www.birdforum.net

 

[dantheman]

Thought it would be interesting to google 'Snowy Owl carrying chicks'. Oh dear ... ;-) ;-)

It's even made it to Snopes.

Real Video of Snowy Owl Carrying Chicks on Her Back?

Snowy owl chicks are typically gray until they reach about 2 months old.

www.snopes.com

 

[kb57]

Thought it would be interesting to google 'Snowy Owl carrying chicks'. Oh dear ... ;-) ;-)

It's even made it to Snopes.

Real Video of Snowy Owl Carrying Chicks on Her Back?

Snowy owl chicks are typically gray until they reach about 2 months old.

www.snopes.com

Yup, internet is full of fake snowy owls! The one I saw was a bit more subtle, with an adult owl cuddling an unfeasibly white looking chick - and with a background that looked like winter...