During this first trimester, we have learned, discussed and experimented numerous topics such as the owl pellets. From this lab, I have discovered the several types of animals that a barn owl consumes. First of, owls are a type of nocturnal bird, and they are carnivores. They eat small prey such as shrews, mice, voles, and especially rats. However, owls don't have teeth like many other birds. Instead, they are torn into smaller pieces and swallowed. Indigestible particals of the prey are then compressed. These parts are excreted into a whats called a pellet. Pellets are masses of bone, teeth, hair, feathers, and exoskeletons from prey. They are produced an regurgitated. Since the pellet is stored and partially blocks its digestive system, new prey cannot be swallowed until the pellet is expelled. Our group's pellet turned out to be a rodent like many others. Although seperating the fur from the bones were a little difficult to do because the bones were very fragile, we found two rodents, a vole and field mouse. I really enjoyed doing this project because we got to search through a pellet to see what a barn owl eats. It was a challenge to put all the bones together to get an animals figure, but it was fascinating to see when skeleton was complete.
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Two other interesting facts that I found out about owl pellets is that an owl's stomach acid is only as strong as vinegar. Because of this, most bones remain unbroken in the pellet. This was amusing considering that some of the bones in our pellet were chipped but overall, the bones did come out to be unbroken and I think this is one of the reasons why we rebuilt the skeleton. I also learned that owls don't have a sense of smell of taste. I thought this was also interesting because to hunt its prey, the owl must depend on its ears and sight. Also, I guess that the owl doesn't care what it eats because they can't taste so they consume many rodents. For example, most of us found a mice or rat.
