By Mary Claire F 11 Period 8 Introduction Silent Flight Sharp Talons Hearing Comparative Question I predict that no matter how much a pellet weighs it wont change the amount of animals in it ID: 439606
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Slide1
Owl Pellets
By Mary Claire F #11Period 8Slide2
Introduction
Silent Flight
Sharp Talons
HearingSlide3
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?” Slide4
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.
Slide5
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 piecesSlide6
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.Slide7
These are the bones that could be found in the pellet.Slide8
Data Tables
Prey animal found
Number of eachNon-prey items found
Vole2
(Nothing
found)
Table 1: Summary of Individual Owl Pellet Contents
Animal
Vole
Pocket Gopher
Mouse
Shrew
Rat
Bird
Mole
Total
# found
49
2
12
1
0
1
0
65
Percent
75.4%
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
1
2
345678Total # of pellets in classTotal # prey animals in class# of pellets184321012065Percent5%40%20%15%10%5%0%5%
100%
Table 3: Number of Prey Animals per Pellet – Class Results (Period 8)Slide9
Animal
VolePocket Gopher
MouseShrew
RatBirdMole
Total
# found
260
27
37
4
0
3
0
331
Percent
78.6%
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
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
>8
Total # of pellets
Total # prey animals in 6
th
grade
Number of pellets
830322011401106331Percent7.6%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 pelletType of prey animal contained by most pelletsNumber of prey animals contained by most prey animals
Lowest to highest number of prey animals in on pellet3
vole
three
1 -- 8
Table 6: Entire Class StatisticsSlide10
Bar GraphsSlide11Slide12
Graph Related to my Comparative Question
This data is from 2014-2015 period 8 classSlide13
Discussion
This is a very small pellet but it looks like it has contains a couple of prey animals. Slide14
Conclusion
It could be very easy to leave these tiny bones in the fur and then throw them out.