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Species
Least Concernvia IUCN
Wikidata facts
Show 8 more facts
- taxon rank
- species
- IUCN conservation status
- Least Concern
- taxon name
- Phodilus badius
- Commons category
- Phodilus badius
- Commons gallery
- Phodilus badius
- litter size
- 4
- taxon common name
- coruja-baia-oriental
- short name
- P. badius
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Oriental bay owl (Phodilus badius) is a species of bay owl. It is completely nocturnal, and can be found throughout Southeast Asia and parts of India. It has several subspecies. It has a heart-shaped face with earlike extensions. The Congo bay owl (Phodilus prigoginei) was formerly classified as a subspecies of Oriental bay owl due to insufficient knowledge, but it has turned out that it might not even belong to the same genus. The Sri Lanka bay owl was also considered a subspecies.
A population of this species has apparently become extinct on Samar Island in the Philippines during the 20th century. It was described as Phodilus badius riverae and was only ever known from a single specimen, which was lost in a bombing raid in 1945. The validity of this taxon is uncertain; it is usually synonymized with the nominate subspecies (for reasons of biogeography) or the subspecies saturatus (from external appearance); it might have been a distinct species, however.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Oriental Bay Owl” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.