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Quite contrary to the common belief, owls are very social animals and indeed form flocks or rather tightly bound families with a common social codex. At sunset, they all meet before going on their individual hunting trip, and they eye themselves very carefully. Any owl not belonging to the group is sho-who-whoed away immediately!

Now this evening, the owls are all excited and agitated: A single owl from another region has sneaked into the flock and is trying to pass as one of them! This can not be!

Can you identify the owl which is behaving anti-socially (i.e. not following the flock rules) in the image below?

A valid answer must contain the flock-rules and why that particular owl is not following it. The puzzle can be solved with a black-and-white printout of the image.

Owl-Picture

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    $\begingroup$ I have no idea what I'm looking at and I totally love this. $\endgroup$
    – Bailey M
    Jun 25, 2015 at 16:41
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    $\begingroup$ I would like to point out that I like this so much I stole it. However, I have to point something out: Your title says sunset but your question says dawn. $\endgroup$
    – Engineer Toast
    Jun 25, 2015 at 20:44
  • $\begingroup$ @EngineerToast Just hope you haven't chosen the same rules I've prepared for my 2nd owl-puzzle (also having an outsider-pair)! We'll see. thanks for pointing out my timing-issue. Corrected now. $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Jun 25, 2015 at 21:26
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    $\begingroup$ Lovely puzzle - but still says "Now this dawn..." at the start of the second paragraph. $\endgroup$
    – Floris
    Jun 25, 2015 at 22:00
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    $\begingroup$ Did you know that real owls can't move their eyes at all? They have evolved huge eyeballs in order to be able to see at night, in fact so huge that there was no more room left for muscles that could move their eyes. They look around by turning their heads instead. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl#Vision $\endgroup$
    – zovits
    Jun 26, 2015 at 10:22

2 Answers 2

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Is it the 3rd owl in the 6th row? The pattern I have seen is that

each owl must have a unique eye orientation in either its row or in its vertical column. The owl I marked in red in the below image has the exact same eye orientation as the owl two places to its right (my right, owl's left) and two places above it.
If one creates an image with "unique eye-pairs" which appear at least 3 times, then one gets:
Uniques
and there is only one square which sits in a column and row which hosts another identically coloured pixel (light blue). This is the odd one out!

So this is a copycat owl who needs to be sho-who-ed away before he learns the ways of this flock.

To clarify:

Owls.png

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    $\begingroup$ Congratulations. You've found it! I'll take the liberty of adding an image to your solution for clarification with an edit. $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Jun 25, 2015 at 19:02
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Here's my answer:

enter image description here

This one little owl is looking away from the rest, while all other owls are looking at another one with at least 1 eye

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    $\begingroup$ Except the 1st (and 7th and 8th) on the top row... Or the 3rd, and 4th on the bottom row. So, sorry, not the solution, but nice try. $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Jun 25, 2015 at 16:47
  • $\begingroup$ @BmyGuest Well, the circled is looking away from all the other owls and is looking in a direction not looked by any other owl with its two eyes :P $\endgroup$
    – Mr Pie
    Apr 30, 2019 at 14:23
  • $\begingroup$ @MrPie But the same could be said for the 4th on the bottom row... $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    Apr 30, 2019 at 19:37
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    $\begingroup$ @MrPie Oh no, I've made enough mistakes in my puzzles that a 2nd unintended solution is perfectly possible. This, however, is luckily none :c) $\endgroup$
    – BmyGuest
    May 1, 2019 at 10:39
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    $\begingroup$ I'm glad that my answer from 4 years ago is still....active hah! $\endgroup$
    – Alex
    May 1, 2019 at 14:43

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