Owl Pellets By Mary Claire F #11 Period 8

Introduction Silent FlightSharp Talons Hearing

Comparative Question I predict that no matter how much a pellet weighs, it won’t change the amount of animals in it. “Does the mass of a pellet affect the number of prey animals in a pellet?”

Procedure First we picked out our Owl Pellet from a box. We unwrapped the tin foil around the owl pellet and wrote down the basic facts about it. This included the mass, length, height, width, and some observations such as color, texture, and smell. Once we were finished doing that we moved on to dissecting the pellet. We broke the owl pellet into two pieces and then started to collect the bones from the pellet. This took a couple days because it’s a little hard to make sure we got every bone in there. When we finished collecting all of the bones we recorded our data. This helped us keep track of our bones Then we started building the skeleton. We glued the bones to the required area on the skeleton sheet. When we were done with that we answered questions about the lab. It really made us think about the project and made it easier for us to do the next step. That led to writing our Introduction and conclusion. At the end of it we made a report by either doing a power point or poster.

This is a picture of what we logged the data for our bones on. This is a picture of us opening the owl pellet into two pieces

My Skeleton This is a skeleton of a vole. This is a picture of a vole when it has all of its fur and is still living.

These are the bones that could be found in the pellet.

Data Tables Prey animal foundNumber of eachNon-prey items found Vole2(Nothing found) Table 1: Summary of Individual Owl Pellet Contents AnimalVolePocket Gopher MouseShrewRatBirdMoleTotal # found Percent75.4%3%18.5%1.5%0%1.5%0%100% Table 2: Types of Prey Animals found in Owl Pellets – Class Results (Period 8) Prey animals per pellet Total # of pellets in class Total # prey animals in class # of pellets Percent5%40%20%15%10%5%0%5% 100% Table 3: Number of Prey Animals per Pellet – Class Results (Period 8)

AnimalVolePocket Gopher MouseShrewRatBirdMoleTotal # found Percent78.6%8.2%11%1.2%0%0.9%0%100% Table 4: Types of Prey Animals found in Owl Pellets (Entire Grade Results) Prey animals per pellet >8 Total # of pellets Total # prey animals in 6 th grade Number of pellets Percent7.6%28%30%18.9%10.4%3.8%0%0.9% 100% Table 5: Number of Prey Animals per Pellet (Entire Grade Results) Average number of prey animals per pellet Type of prey animal contained by most pellets Number of prey animals contained by most prey animals Lowest to highest number of prey animals in on pellet 3volethree Table 6: Entire Class Statistics

Bar Graphs

Graph Related to my Comparative Question This data is from period 8 class

Discussion This is a very small pellet but it looks like it has contains a couple of prey animals.

Conclusion It could be very easy to leave these tiny bones in the fur and then throw them out.