Friday, February 22, 2008

dissecting owl pellets


Why would you want to dissect owl pellets? After all, owl pellets are dried up owl poop. Sounds gross, right? Well, owl pellets are actually really cool (and they don't stink)! They are fun to dissect because they contain the skeletal remains of small mammals. You can dissect them to find animal bones and then "build" a skeleton from those bones. And owl pellets are pretty inexpensive. Check them out here. You don't need to buy all of the dissection equipment. Just get some toothpicks and tweezers. Needles work well too for older kids. Pick out the bones and then glue them to a piece of construction paper to make a skeleton. Have your child guess what animal the bones came from (probably a mouse, but to be sure, google "mouse skeleton" when you're finished and see if the pictures match your skeleton). This activity is a good way to introduce and discuss the topic of food chains and/or ecosystems.

The owl photo was taken by allspice1 and posted on Flickr: Creative Commons.

3 comments:

Jennifer said...

Holy crap....he he!

not extravagant said...

eeeeeewwwww!

Anonymous said...

Hey, where'd ya go?