If you're like me, the word dissection brings back memories of cutting and poking on smelly, wet, dead things in high school biology. Yuck. As a homeschooling mother, however, I have now become the teacher, obligating me to provide things for my own children to dissect. I teach a class on Tuesday mornings to eight homeschooled little girls and this week we dissected owl pellets. Whether you homeschool or your children attend public or private school, owl pellets are a fascinating, educational, and inexpensive object for dissection.
What is an owl pellet?
Owls eat their food whole. Since they don't have teeth, they swallow whole chunks of animals like rodents, shrews, moles, and birds. During digestion, the harder or indigestible materials like bones, fur, and feathers are separated from the meat. The owl regurgitates these leftovers in the form of a pellet.
First, you separate the bones from the fur and feathers using tweezers or preferably toothpicks. Be careful or you can snap the fragile bones.
It's handy to have a chart to identify the bones, and therefore learn what your owl had for dinner. Online forms can be downloaded here or here (PDF).
Our owls had eaten either two or three different kinds of small animals. The pellets were dry and didn't smell, which gave them high marks in my book.
The dissections are time consuming and educational, leading one mother to remark that she might order a supply to keep at home when her kids needed a quiet or rainy day activity! If you're looking for a neat science project to do at home with your children, dissecting owl pellets is a great choice.
[Owl pellets are inexpensive and prices vary depending on size. They can be ordered at Owl Brand Discovery Kits from $1.54 to $3.00 each. Additional information, including a virtual dissection, can be found at KidWings.]
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I really want to be the kind of mom that does this! It is in our curriculum this year, and I was thinking of asking my husband to do it for me, but this doesn't look as scary as I thought.
Ooh we had such fun at KidWings – thanks for the great link!
We did owl pellet dissection recently when we found an owl had been roosting in our barn. Wish I had known about the identification charts! Oh well. Next time I will.