Owl Pellet Lab

In this lab we dissected an owl pellet to find the skeleton of the animal that the owl ate and recognize and compare that skeleton to the human skeleton. To do this we used forceps to break through the excess feathers and dirt in the pellet and to be able to extract the bones. Through this, we found that the animal the owl had eaten was a rat. We could determine this since the length of the skull was larger than 25 centimeters, significantly larger than a mouse's skull. In addition, the structure of the rat's skeleton was much unlike the structure of a bird's since it's head was shaped differently and it had teeth. These were clear signs that it was a rat since they correspond with the structures of a rat as well.

The rat's skeleton was similar to the skeleton of human's in that it has similar rib structure and vertebrae. The ulna and radius, fibula and tibia, of the rat are also similar to that of human's.
Some differences are the cranium, which is curved downward and has a more elongated mandible. In addition, the scapula of the rat is placed differently than that of humans' and the humerus has more of a role in the rat's movement so it appears to place more prominently. The humerus and scapula of our rat's skeleton was left connected, providing a better perspective on their connections.