Owl Pellet Lab

After separating the bones from the owl pellet, my partner Vega and I began arranging the bones to resemble a skeleton of an animal. We found many small bones in our animal, which we thought were ribs of the animal. The key, however, of determining what the animal was, the shrew, was its pelvis. The pelvis, shown in the picture below, most resembles one of a shrew, which have bones that are irregular and have a hole in them. Another indicating factor was its tibia and fibula; however, this was not as detrimental in determining the animal due to the fact that two animals´ tibia and fibula resembled the ones we scavenged from the owl pellet.

Remains of the Shrew´s Skeleton

Bones and other remainings

The skeleton of the shrew is quite similar to the human skeleton. Both skeletons have pelvis that have a hole in it, tibia & fibula that allows them to walk, and ribs that protect vital organs. The differences, however, are marginally large, as shrews walk on four legs while we humans walk on two. This will effect the difference in size of the tibia and the femur. The way that the shrew´s skeleton is formed is also different from human´s, as the shrew´s skeleton curves more than the human´s. Another difference between the two skeletons are the size of the bones. The size of the bones is really indicating the size of the organism, hence the marginally large difference in height between humans and shrews.

Bones