Owl Pellet Lab

In this lab we dissected owl pellets. Now before I state what we did, owl pellets are basically an owls throw-up. Owls have two stomachs: The first is the glandular stomach and the second in the muscular stomach. The Glandular absorbs all the bones, fur, and/or hard tissue. This is then thrown up by the owl creating owl pellets. the muscular stomach absorbs all the soft tissue and is then excreted by the owl.

Human Skeleton

Rat Skeleton 

In this lab we examined the contents of owl pellets. From bones and fur, my partner and I were able to determine that the owl fed on a rat due to an approximate  30mm skull, where as a mouse is 25mm or less.


Also we determined it was a rat due to a longer fibular/tibia ( to the right). Attached to this is also a bigger hip and the back legs are bigger than a mouse.

Human Skeleton v. Rats Skeleton: These Skeletons are Similar
because they have same leg structures, same spinal features, and finally the same features a human has on a skull is also on a rats skull just in a different shape. Rats and Humans though are also different due to the rats having different sets of teeth, different front leg structures than humans (because humans have hands, and rats don't), and finally due to rats having a longer spinal cord so that it connects to their tail. Rats have a very similar skeleton structure compared to a human because of the same type of setup, however the rats skeleton is just set up in a different position.