Owl Pellet Lab

Owl Pellet Lab

In the lab, we look the pellet and measured it. Ours was 4.33 grams, 1.5 inches in length and 1.3 inches in width. Next, we separated the fur and dirt from the bones and put them into separate piles. Once we had the bones, we used the instructions on page 15 to determine the organism that the skeleton was of.
Our organism was the Vole. We determined this organism by referring to the steps on page 15 of the work book. The answer to the first step was that our organism had teeth and the second concluded that there were different sections for the canine and molar teeth. That sent us to step 3 where the organism had individual roots for the teeth.
The concluding factor was between the vole and the pocket gopher. Since the skulls length was 25 mm and width 14 mm with lower jaw being 12 mm and width 3 mm, the vole was in that category. Having teeth separated the organism from a bird and the rest such as the teeth roots and molar separation, along with the size of the skull which separated the vole from all other rodents but especially the pocket gopher. The pocket gophers skull was ranging from 30-42 mm length and 25-36 mm width. The last fact that determined the vole was the organism was that the front teeth were pointed as shown in the picture below. That is how we determined that the vole was the prey of the owl.

The voles skeleton is similar to the humans in which they have teeth, different sections for the different kinds of teeth; molars and canines. Also, the vole and humans have the same joint near the temple of the skull that
is the second class lever which allows the diagstric muscle to open the mouth.

Key differences include the size of the skull because the length of the vole is 25 mm and the humans is much larger. Also, the vole has an upper and bottom tooth and the the molars are far back in the jaw where as humans have teeth all across the from and the sides and the mole has a larger mandible.  Lastly, the vole has very small occipital, parietal, and temporal skulls on the sides or the back of the head because their skull is longer, but humans have distinct areas for those skulls because they have a larger rounded cavity for that bone.

CREDIT: Joshua Li has the pictures.