Class Response- Owl Pellets Lab

In class, we dissected owl pellets. Owl pellets are the undigestable parts of the owls diet. They contain the fur and bones of what the owl ate which include rodents like shrews, rats, and mice. The process in which the pellet is made is very interesting. Owl's use their stomach muscles to seperate the indigestable parts like the bones and fur. These go to the intestines. After about 24 hours, the pellet is regurgitated. Owl's must do this because they swallow their food whole.
After doing this lab, I learned many interesting facts about Barn Owl's. They produce pellets because they swallow their food whole and from the pellet itself, you can find out a lot about the owl like what it ate and through more extensive research, you can possibly find ou twhere it lives.

Current Event 2

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/kids/news/story/0,28277,1944959,00.html

In this article, a team of scientists found over 17,ooo spiecies living more than 656 feet below the surface of the ocean. At this point, sunlight can no longer be seen. These spiecies live in complete darkness and survive on matter that falls down that deep. This discovery is apart og the Marine Census which will be complete by October 2010. Oceanographers believe that thousands more spiecies will be discovered. Over 2,000 scientist from over 80 countries are working on this. The research can cost up to $50,000 a day! They found 40 new spiecies of coral, undersea stars, transparent sea cucumbers and tubeworms.

I found this article to be interesting because of the amount of new spiecies that were found. I never knew that animals would be able to live so far below the sea level that sunlight doesn't even reach there. It seems that the scientists just thought that these species didn't even exist!