Owl Pellets

Concept: Food Chain
All living things need energy to grow and thrive. A food chain shows the feeding relationship between different living things in a particular environment or habitat. Within a food chain, some living things create the energy (producers) and some use the energy (consumers). Plants are producers and animals are consumers. There are four different types of consumers in the animal kingdom. A carnivore is an animal that only eats other animals. A herbivore is an animal that only eats plants. An omnivore is an animal that eats both plants and animals. A scavenger is an animal that eats dead animals.

Read Aloud: Owl Puke by Jane Hammerslough

Ingredients:

      ·         Owl Pellets
      ·         Toothpicks
      ·         Tweezers

 Demonstration:

      ·         Gently break apart the owl pellet using toothpicks and tweezers.

      ·         Sort through the pellet for bones, teeth, claws, feathers and fur.

      ·         Group similar bones together and try to reconstruct and classify the skeletons.

Experiment:

·         Can you identify how many animals were eaten by the owl?

·         Can you identify what types of animals were eaten by the owl?

Observations:
Owl pellets are the regurgitated remains of an owl's meal. Owls usually swallow their food whole, digesting the edible parts and then expelling the indigestible parts through their mouth as a pellet. Since owl pellets contain the remains of the owl's prey, it is possible to determine the owl's diet and subsequent place in the food chain.