A Twitter post recently went viral for revealing a little known fact of the natural world: baby owls sleep face down. Journalist Mark Rees’ tweeted the image showing a fuzzy owlet on its stomach, long fluffy legs stretched out. While the picture was meme-worthy enough to inspire amusing captions and over 143,000 likes, many wondered whether it was really authentic. Since online images are often faked or taken out of context to attain to “viral” status, was this just a dead baby owl or a dummy bird? (1)
This time, it turns out that the information is true. Savvy internet sleuths have discovered that this owl sleeping position has been documented on many occasions. Like humans, baby owls have large heads at birth–but not always the strength to hold their head steady.

The Early Life Of Baby Owls
While of the same family as hawks and eagles, owls are a unique bird in many ways. In comparison with their raptor counterparts, they have large heads, stocky bodies, and soft feathers. Their large eyes, specially adapted to seeing at night, face forward as human eyes do.
When the baby owls hatch, they’re blind and helpless for the first few weeks of life. As they grow, fed by their parents at the nest, they’ll start to venture out bit by bit. They might explore nearby branches or vegetation before they’ve learned to fly, preparing themselves for life on their own. When they get tired from all that exploring, the owlets then need to take their belly nap–amusingly similar to the way a sleeping human baby would. (2)
One of many who have documented this adorable phenomenon is Joseph Clark. A longtime listener of BirdNote, a radio program partnered with the Audobon Society, Clark witnessed this behavior first hand near his home. On a walk in his hometown of East Haddam, Connecticut, the bird lover found a pair of Barred Owlets on that ground that had fallen out of their nest. His experience adds evidence to the many first-hand accounts of these belly-sleepers. (3)
I finally had the chance to fact-check this and I think it’s true?
Which is all kinds of amazing because TIL human toddlers & teenage owls are both champions of the Awkward Nap. https://t.co/uZbcuMDeyL
— Mika McKinnon (@mikamckinnon) June 3, 2019
A Rescue And A Well-Deserved Snooze
While the two baby owls were being pestered by ravens, Clark contacted the Audobon Society on how to rescue the birds. He was able to scare the ravens away, find the nest, and return the owlets safely–all while the mama owl watched keenly nearby. Later, he observed the birds in order to make sure they were safe, happy, and well.
Since owls–including the young–sleep during the day, Clark could easily watch them. He observed the owlets as they sharply gripped a tree branch with their talons before lying down on their stomachs. Then, turning their heads to the side, they went to sleep. The bird’s back toe, or hallux, prevents the babies from falling out of the tree during one of their short naps. (3)
This account adds to Rees’ original tweet, as well as additional images of slumbering baby owls that verify the same sleeping position. It appears that it’s easier to rest that large head down on a cozy branch, at least until they’re strong enough to sleep standing up.