Owl Pellet Lab

In our Owl Pellet Lab, we were given an owl pellet to pick apart and needed to identify exactly what kind of animal(s) were part of this particular owl's diet. In my lab group, we found multiple bones and even skulls within the owl pellet, as documented by the pictures on the bottom, and even were able to identify a few of the bones that we as humans shared with these organisms.

We were able to find an assortment of animal bones

An animal's femur, pelvis, lower jaws, and other assorted bones

Upon uncovering all of the bones in the owl pellet, I hypothesized that one of our animals was a pocket gopher, due to certain characteristics of the skull that we observed. From the owl pellet that we got(which was 6.35 g, 45 mm long, and 33 mm wide), we had dug out a skull which was 36 mm long and 21 mm wide, with accompanying mandibles 16.5 mm in length and 3.7 mm in width. This fit in with the typical characteristics of pocket gophers(which have skull lengths of 30-42 millimeters), and although there were some discrepancies in the supposed mandible length(the ones that we found were significantly smaller), that can be attributed to the gopher being eaten prematurely. Additionally, the teeth of the skull were observed to be sharp and pointy, and have separate roots, which is one other characteristics that pocket gophers and voles share. Lastly, the shape of the skull did resemble that of a typical pocket gopher(as seen from the packet), which further solidified my suspicions that the animal we were dealing with was a pocket gopher.

The teeth of the skull were sharp and had individual roots

The skull looked almost exactly like the picture in the packet

As for ways that the animals were similar and different to our own human anatomy, the animals that we discovered had similar femurs, vertebrae, and scapulas as humans. The bones were surprisingly identifiable due to their similarity to human features in our own anatomy. In the scapula specifically, both shoulder blades in rodents and in humans have a fan-like shape, which made it easy to find. Things that differed from human anatomy were definitely the skull(and the teeth as accessories), the pelvis, and the mandible. The differences in the mandibles was most prominent, as humans only have one large lower jaw, while rodents seem to have 2.

The scapula looked a lot like humans' due to its similar shape

Rodents tend to have separated mandibles, not like humans