Parents dissect owl pellets with kids at School 4 in Oceanside

Owl pellets are strangely fascinating if you can get past the gross-out factor, as parents and relatives of School 4’s third-graders learned recently. The children dissect owl pellets as part of the curriculum and this year, School 4 thought families might like

to participate.

Essentially, owl pellets are vomit after it’s been collected and sanitized. Science companies use it for research and education. Owls are carnivores who swallow their prey whole. Their stomachs have two chambers. In one, the prey is digested. The other chamber separates the indigestible parts such as fur, bones and teeth and coughs them up. When the children dissect the pellets, they separate those parts from the organic material, now hardened, that the owl coughed up. Some students like to put all of the bones together to recreate the critter that gave its life to science.