Owl Pellet Lab

In this lab, we dissected an owl pellet to determine what type of animal the owl had consumed. We broke down the owl pellet and separated the fur from the bones and based off of the bone structures, we figured out what type of animal the owl had ingested.

Lower Jaw

The organism we observed was a vole. We were able to come to a conclusion based on the skull & lower jaw length. The length of the skull was about 20mm and the lower jaw was about 18 mm. Both were pretty close in length in the diagram for a vole. Another giveaway was the space between the teeth and the molars in the mouth.

Skull

Bones

The anatomy of this rodent is rather similar to one of a human as some if its basic bones matched up. Some of the bones included the skull, femur as well as tibia and fibula.
Also, the vole and humans body have similar structure as it went from the skull all the way down to the legs. We also noticed some bones that were the ball and socket join which is similar to humans. These connect to the hip and allows movement.
An obvious difference between the vole and humans is the skull and the jaw. Our skull is not as long and sharp as the vole and our teeth are more evenly spaced apart. The vole had a gap between the molars and the rest of the teeth. Also, voles has tails which make up for the many tiny bones we found. Most of the tiny bones were broken down and pretty indistinguishable. Lastly, the bones of a vole is way skinnier and tinier in comparison to human bones.