Byron Center — What’s on the menu for an owl’s dinner? Marshall Elementary fourth-graders recently discovered the details of an owl’s diet by dissecting pellets of undigested fur, hair and bones.
Over a two-day science lab, students used tweezers to pull apart their tightly bundled pellets and dig out the tiny bones of animals once enjoyed as an owl’s lunch but then regurgitated.
“I found a mouse’s vertebrae,” Annie Chen said, holding up a bone as small as a pencil’s eraser.
The young scientists organized their findings on a worksheet that listed the different sizes and shapes of small creatures’ bones they would find inside the pellets, such as gophers, rats, voles, mice and shrews.
Clyde Davis held up a bone with his tweezers to examine it.
“It’s definitely a vole or a mouse bone,” he concluded, and added it to his skeleton map.
Dissecting pellets and learning about owls’ digestive systems was part of the fourth-grade science unit on food chains, said teacher Josh Keef.
“In our Human Machine unit, we learned about how bones and muscles work together inside our bodies,” Keef said. “Through dissection, we’re learning about the ecosystems that might be right outside our classroom window.”
He said that on the first day some students are “grossed-out” by the pellets’ origins, but by day two, “They’re getting their hands dirty and never know what they’re going to find.”
Across the hall in Hailey Antonini’s classroom, fourth-grader Savannah Lewis said she had a “lucky” pellet because she found two intact skulls, while most pellets only had one.
Savannah said she also learned a lot about owls from the science unit.
“Owls have wide eyes to be able to see at night and eat bunnies,” she said.
One desk over, Adelaide Terrien explained how what owls eat results in pellets to dissect.
“Any animals that owls eat, they eat them whole and spit back up the parts that aren’t digestible,” Adelaide said.
Added Isla Hooper: “Learning about owls and their digestion is really fun because I didn’t know about it before.”
Read more from Byron Center:
• Fourth-grade writers share personal narratives
• Gorillas, flamingos and komodo dragons, oh my!
