Owl Pellet Dissection

Summary: During this lab we first researched about the different types of organisms owls consume and found out basically how to go about recognizing these organisms from their pellets. We then proceeded to dissect the pellet using tweezers a knife. Carefully we then sorted the different bones, and fur that we found in the pellet. Finally we analyzed these bones to find out the animal the owl had consumed and tried to recreate the animals skeleton from them.

Claim: The organism that our owl ate was a mole

Evidence: The first piece of evidence that the animal is a mole is because it has white teeth. The second major feature is that there is no gab between the teeth in the jaw. Finally the animal has a cheekbone.

Reasoning: Because the organism had teeth we can rule out any birdlike creatures. Finally because the animal had white teeth and no jaw we could eliminate the animal down to three organisms including the mole. Finally only the mole had a cheekbone out of these three organisms, confirming our claim that the animal was a mole.





Similarities
1. The first major similarity is in the bones of the limbs. These look extremely similar to those of human anatomy, specifically I noticed similarities in the tibia and fibula.

2. The second similarity is in the ribs. The ribs look exactly alike to those of the human skeleton.

3. The final similarity is in the teeth. The teeth of this animal mirror molars in the human body.

Differences
1. The jaw is completely different from a human jaw. It is sharper and curved more at the front ends.

2. The skull is definitely smaller and more elongated that a human skeleton.

3. The vertebra that we discovered looked slightly different than that of a human.