What We Learned from Dissecting Owl Pellets

What were some interesting things that you noticed/found?

Isaac- I found 2 skulls, some people found more than 1 skull. There were lots of little bones.

Katie - I noticed that the bones were actually more breakable than I thought. Our bones are bigger so they’re stronger, but I thought they were as ours would be.

Why is it important to know what Owls eat?

Rowan- Maybe they ate a mouse and then the mouse had eaten something like poison, then the owl would eat the poisonous mouse, which is like eating something poisonous too.

Tom- If the owl ate a mole, probably no one in our class got a mole. If the owl ate a mole, it would be a big owl pellet, because the mole is pretty big. I don’t think I got a mole. I’m pretty sure I got 3 rodents. I got 3 skulls. One skull looked like a bull skull, but it was tiny. There were horns and it had the face of a bull. It was probably a really small mouse.

What types of impacts do humans have on Owls? (Think about habitats of the Owls and their prey - i.e If Owls eat mice, who have been eating grains with pesticides, what might happen?)

Oyster- Elf Owls live in cactuses. They eat small lizards and bugs. Those lizards are rare (the ones they eat), and they’re so small, so sometimes people walking in the desert people might break the lizards’ habitat and then the owl can’t eat the lizards, so it doesn’t have very many choices on what to eat. The humans don’t know what they’re doing but it still affects the habitats.

Owen D.- Lizards live in desert, how are you supposed to do destroy owl’s habitat.

Gracie- People do it on purpose. I remember when I was little I always used to sit on ant hills because it was fun for me. You still shouldn’t step on any hills.

Tom- The humans sometimes accidentally step in holes. They sometimes trip over them, and sometimes they’re animal holes, like owl holes. There’s an animal chain. The human steps on something, and keeps going on.

It ruins the habitat and they have to find another place to live. We should be cautious where we step, and where we build.

What role do plants play in the food chain?

Ali- Animals in the food chain they hunt other animals to survive. Some animals cold hibernate in the winter and they get things that they eat and they hibernate and they get their stuff so they could have a lot of food for when they go back out of their hibernation. Some animals,  if they would eat plants. If you’re an animal that needs to eat plants to survive, thats what you have to eat.

Ava Bunny- The food chain, starts off with nature, than an animal that eats nature. Starts off with plants, then omnivores that eat plants, If you didn’t have plants, there’d be no animals that eat plants. Then that takes away the animals that eats the meat, and then they’ll start hunting their own kind.