Tuesday, September 23, 2014

owls

We dissected some owl pellets last week. If anyone doesn't know what an owl pellet is - owls swallow their prey whole or in pieces and then regurgitate all the bones, fur and such that can't be digested in a kind of oblong ball called a pellet. (Here are some pictures of owl pellets.) If you take one apart you can see what the owl ate. I ordered ours online. They were heat treated so none of us contracted and bird or rodent diseases or anything.


Waiting to start.




Rory showing a bone she found. We had a chart showing what the bones were and what animal they came from, but it didn't really help much. We could tell that our owls had only eaten rodents and not birds from the skulls we found and the lack of feathers. But, we couldn't really tell which rodent. They also eat insects and such.



A skull.




A jawbone.






These are all the bones from Piper's pellet.

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