Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Owl Pellet experiment presented by Tonya Sensei

Tonya gave us tremendous opportunity to study about OWL. We all had a great time in this activities. Thank you so much to help us Tonya!

Here are the introduction of this class.

Most of the larger owls feed on small mammals, birds, and reptiles. Owls usually swallow their food whole. If an animal is too large to swallow whole, the owl may tear it into large chunks. The owl does not digestive system presses these parts together to form a pellet. The owl eventually spits out the pellet. By taking apart the pellet, you can tell what and how much the owl has eaten.

Tonya showed us presentation slides at the beginning. We could listen to the owls' voices during the slides.

Let's start dissecting the pellets!

Sometimes we have to check the bones by microscope to identify what part of the body in the animal.

We had the possibility to find;

Rodent
Shrew
Mole
Bird

We mostly found Rodents' bones.

Dissector #1

Dissector #2

Dissector #3

Dissector #4