Owl Pellets

Today my kids and I performed my 2nd Lab report for my Biology class.

We were able to dissect our 1st ever Owl Pellet.

As my girls said, "Ooooooh, that's gross!"

The following is Part 1 for my assignment. 

It measured 7cm in length and 2 3/4 cm in width.

We dug right in breaking this little pellet apart. Separating the bones from the fur and feathers. 

We then had to match the bones found to the chart given to me.

The chart shows which animals the bones came from.

When all the bones were separated we had to lay out the pieces trying to form a skeleton of the prey that was eaten. We had the most pieces for a bird including the skull so we went with that. We thought it was pretty cool we found 2 parts of the beak and some talon's. 

After recording the information into the tables I then had to create a graph showing data from 

Table 2. Wanting to continue to teach my kids I showed them how we could add other information into the graph also. They thought that was pretty cool too!

 Part 2

A Number Pyramid for a 24-hour Period

Question's

1. An owl pellet is what the owl has eaten but hasn't digested. It is full of the non digestible parts like     bones, fur and feathers.

2. 3 young owls eat 5 mice a night. That's 15 mice a night. 2 adult owls eat 4 mice a night. That's 8  

    mice a night. Over a 30 day period a parent owl would have to catch 690 mice (15 x 8).

3. The pellet I received was from the owl family, Tytonidae otherwise known as the barn owl.

4. Humans, lions, swordfish, eagles and owls are the most threatened organisms of a community that       are exposed to DDT or mercury. This is because humans and other species eat fish. When fish have     have been exposed to mercury it is then passed on to specie that ate it. Plants are quite often          

    exposed to DDT. When the plant is eaten that pesticide is then past on to it's predator and can     

    cause sickness and death.