Adorable Orphaned Owls Get a New Lease on Life

In a time when it seems like so much of what goes viral online is bad news, it’s nice to see something sweet and heartwarming gaining traction. That’s exactly what happened with Threads user @meesowcorny’s post. The Sept. 25 post featured a story about two orphaned owl babies.

“This is the sweetest act ever; her lifeless eggs were replaced with two orphans while she was away,” the caption on the video read. The clip quickly went viral, earning more than 77,400 likes and hundreds of comments in the first few days it was up.

People couldn’t help but gush over the cute owlets and the sweet mom who took them in to raise as her own. However, arguments about whether or not the video was real quickly started, prompting someone to find the source of the video.

As it turns out, wildlife artist and filmmaker Robert E. Fuller is the one who originally captured the story. And the real-life version of what happened is actually so much sweeter than what the original viral post explained. 

The Full Video Tells a Longer Story

According to Fuller’s full-length video, the nearly 4-year-old Threads clip was just a brief snippet taken from a 49:15-minute video about two tawny owls named Luna and Bomber. The pair adopted six orphaned owls during the full video, raising them as their own.

But that’s not all. Luna, the adoptive mother, once received the same treatment herself. That’s because she was originally orphaned, and Fuller stepped in to make sure that she was placed with an owl that would also raise her as her own.

People Can’t Get Enough of the Tawny Owls

The original video also went viral at the time, receiving more than 9,200 comments after it was posted. People couldn’t stop gushing over the situation, especially how Luna’s partner owl constantly came back to hang out with his surprise babies. 

“I absolutely love that Bomber secretly spends time with the chicks,” one person wrote. 

Others joked about how easily the pair took to the new babies whenever they were added to the nesting box. “I like how Bomber and Luna are like, ‘Wait… how many kids did we have before? Are these new? Eh, whatever, they’re probably ours,’ and care for them regardless,” they wrote.

Those who fell in love with the cute owls will likely be pleased to know that Fuller has additional footage up on his YouTube page, and some of it even includes other animals. While not all of the stories are as heartwarming as the one about the baby owls, they are still very impressive, especially when you consider how many of these animals started off as rescues.