Owl Pellets!

Yesterday, I found an owl pellet in the woods near my house.

What is an owl pellet?

Owls swallow their prey (mice, moles, shrews and small birds) whole or big chunks, but they can't digest bones, fur or feathers. These indigestible parts are compacted into a ball and spit back out. This ball of bones and fur or feathers is called an owl pellet.

It can be an interesting project to dissect an owl pellet and find out what it ate. I decided to dissect the owl pellet I found. Here are the steps I took:

1. To disinfect the owl pellet, we wrapped it in tin foil and baked it at 325 for 45 minutes to kill the germs.

2. While it was baking, I collected the tools we would need: gloves, tweezers, a tray to put the bones in and a bone sorting/identifying worksheet.

3. Once the owl pellet cooled off, we unwrapped the tin foil and used the tweezers to carefully remove the bones from the fur.


4. We collected all the bones in a tray, and used the sorting chart to identify the bones.

Here is a video of us getting ready to dissect the owl pellet
Here is a video of us looking at and identifying the bones we found

Animal Adaptations

ANIMAL ADAPTATIONS

3rd and 4th graders at Westshire are learning about animal adaptations!

There are two types if animal adaptations:

Behavioral-these are things an animal does to help it survive, like hibernating or migrating in winter, or playing dead or being totally still and silent when its predator is nearby.

Structural-these are things an animal has as a part of its body that help it survive, like a beak, claws or fur.

Today, students watched an interesting video about animal adaptations, and then made up their own animals. To do this yourself:

WATCH THE VIDEO

MAKE AN ANIMAL

1. Pick an environment (the north pole? A swamp? A desert? A Caribbean island?)
2. Make up an animal
3. Give it a structural adaptation (something it has as a part of its body that will help it survive in the environment you chose)
4. Give it a behavioral adaptation (something it does to help it survive in the environment you chose)
5. Give it a name to match its adaptations
6. Draw a picture of it!

Have fun!