CNN —Flying slowly and silently through the night sky, barn owls are majestic nocturnal hunters that successfully prey on rodents scurrying along the ground below. Unlike the snowy owl, the barn owl lives at latitudes where it doesn’t regularly snow. The barn owl’s paradoxically bright plumage baffled biologist Juanjo Negro and his colleagues, who thought the intriguing biological phenomenon warranted further investigation. The barn owl's white coloring allows the bird to approach its prey without being detected, according to a new study. “This explanation has not been proposed before to justify the whiteness of barn owls,” Negro added.

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Persons: Juanjo Negro, “, ”, Negro, Jamie Hall, Shutterstock, Alexandre Roulin, Roulin, ” Roulin Organizations: CNN, Research Council, University of Lausanne’s Locations: Seville, Spain, Suffolk, UK