Owl Pellet Dissection

What are Owl Pellets?  I know you're wondering...
Let's have a look:

What is an owl pellet?
Owls are birds of prey. That means that they hunt the animals that they eat. After an owl eats the small rodents, birds, and bugs that are a part of its nightly diet, its stomach cannot digest the fur, bones, teeth, feathers, and insect shells from that food. These "extra" parts are formed into a tight PELLET inside the owl and are then are later SPIT UP by the owl. Pellets are usually about as big as an adult thumb and they are often dissected by students and scientist to help them learn exactly what owls eat and what kinds of small animals and bugs live in a particular area. If you get a chance to examine what is inside an owl pellet, you will be lucky, there is a lot to learn and it is surprisingly FUN!

A pellet is a mass of undigested remains of a meal that is coughed up by an owl after consuming its prey; formed by the contractions of the owl's gizzard.

Sounds interesting, huh??

The following are some photos we took during our dissecting of such during our class time at Classical Conversations last Friday:

This is our "map" we'll use to identify what we're finding:

(I don't know why it's uploading sideways but you get the idea.)

Here's what it looked like broken apart and ready for the "dig".

Here you see Chloe & Madeline have broken up the pellet and are now trying to clear out the pieces of skeleton to match up on their chart in order to determine what their owl ate. There is a lot of fur and stuff to dig through in order to find the "good stuff".

Yay!! They have found a little skull along with various other skeletal pieces they have already matched up on their paper map.

Lauren & Faith are having a great time now that they know it's not a stinky adventure.

It was a lot of fun (Faith was smiling before I got the camera on her, LOL) going through the pellets & learning about owls. 

I highly recommend ordering some pellets of your own and looking through them with your kids. 

Next week, we'll be doing something that will be a real stinker for sure so stay tuned!