The family Strigidae (true owls) is missing from the poster on the Ark Encounter. The Barn Owl family (Tytonidae) and three extinct families of owls are on the list, but the true owls are missing. I assume this one is a simple oversight, particularly because I believe there are representations of true owls on the Ark Encounter.

Is this a true owl depicted on the Ark Encounter? It’s hard to say because it could be one of the other five owl kinds.

In fact, this is likely the cause of the problem. Most of the kinds with representatives displayed on the Ark Encounter were moved from the main list to the introductory list at the top of each section, which includes directions for where to find them on the Ark. But they must have been lost in the move, because the poor owls cannot be found in either location.

Strigidae is on AIG’s the original paper on the extant Avian Ark Kinds, and is identified as the Owl Kind. The owl order, Strigiformes, is usually divided into six families. The other owl family missing from the Ark Encounter poster is Palaeoglaucidae, which only has two species known from the fossil record. There seems to be some genuine argument over whether this is a separate family in the literature, so I assume that Answers is Genesis is lumping these species under one of the other kinds. But I’m just guessing there, because until they actually publish those papers instead of just a list I’m stuck guessing at their logic.

The only family that I noticed missing from the original paper on the extant Avian Ark Kinds was Sulidae, which I assume was omitted because they were embarrassed to call it the Booby Kind. However they did call Paridae the Tit Kind, when they could have easily gotten away with calling it the Chickadee Kind, so maybe it was just another oversight.

How could they forget the boobies?

I think the lesson here is that this is an awful lot of animals to keep track of. The team involved in the creation and proofreading of this list must be much larger than Noah and his family, and yet animals just slipped off the radar. Ark Encounter would argue that Noah didn’t have to keep track of all of the animals because God sent the animals to him. But Noah was responsible for preparing enclosures and food to meet their needs for over a year. Surely that planning would require having a list of expected animals! If the Ark Encounter team can’t manage to maintain such a list, how could Noah?