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Owl puke dissection kit

David Pescovitz at 12:07 pm Thu, Aug 26, 2010

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Prodimages Cc-Owl-Lg For $7.30, you can buy a hunk of owl poop puke. Why? Dissection, of course! From Copernicus Toys: "Dissect this sanitary owl pellet which contains the skeletal remains of an owl meal. Learn about the owl’s habitat, place in the food chain, and predatory skills. Use some archaeological skills to piece together the skeletons using the bone chart."
Compact Curiosities: Owl Pellet Dissection Kit (Amazon)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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  • Sensi206

    We did this back in 4th or 5th grade, I might actually get one because my pellet back then didn’t have all the bones:(

  • Anonymous

    When my 4th grade class did this, we had to glue the bones to black construction paper and label them. The project is still hanging on the front of my fridge.

  • Anonymous

    It’s actually owl puke. They barf up the bones and fur and other indigestible stuff.

  • Junior

    Owl Pellets! One of the highlights of the 6th grade experience.

    • Inventorjack

      Definitely a cool memory from school.

  • FrontierP

    I think this is not poop, but rather a vomited pellet of undigested stuff. Owls can’t digest some fur and bones, and biologists often sort through these pellets to figure out what the owls are eating. I remember disecting these in high school biology in Arkansas.

    • bbonyx

      Yeah, I would think the “Puke (has never been so interesting)” printed squarely on the front of the package would be a minor clue. :P

  • JG

    Owl Pellets are the ambergris of the raptor world.
    You’re on the correct tract (digestive) David, just wrong end.
    The pellets are regurgitated pieces that never were digested. Great for assaying the local small mammal population or a really complicated model kit.

    • Lobster

      Raptors puke hamburgers? Man, dinosaurs are awesome.

  • Anonymous

    I think that owl pellets are regurgitated, so they’re more like puke than poop.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellet_(ornithology)
    cheers-sloppydelicious

  • kattw

    Yeah, this was standard fare back in middle school. And really no worse than pulling apart a grass clod.

    What saddens me is that, if this is for sale, schools must not be doing it regularly anymore, which is really a shame. Between my class, we had 4 or 5 whole mice skeletons, which is pretty darn neat at that point in your life.

  • Anonymous

    Not poop…but barf. As a science teacher, I still use these. Of course, the way school budgets are, I usually pay for them out of my own pocket…..

  • Tony Moore

    We did these in 6th grade, i think. i thought it was a blast. then again, i was a nerd and thought everything we did in Science class was a blast.

  • The Tim

    As others have pointed out, it’s puke, not poop. It even says as much right on the front of the bag in the photo.

  • David Pescovitz

    Ah, yes. Fixed! Thanks!

  • m in athens

    I had the good luck to see an owl hark one of these up one time while I was visiting the Carolina Raptor Center. It was so quiet and sudden– kind of alarming, but the owl was completely meh about the whole thing, unsurprisingly.

  • Anonymous

    Once again, Mike Rowe explains it all:
    http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/dirty-jobs-owl-vomit-collector.html

  • mxjohnson

    It may not even be a real owl pellet. Many on the market are synthetic.

  • Anonymous

    My kids both did this in a camp at maybe age 8 or so…They were totally fascinated by vole/mouse skeleton parts. Didn’t seem to care much about the hucking up part. They even brought home whatever they pulled out…I quietly disposed as soon as their attention wavered.

  • baberman

    I grew up right by the Copernicus Toy store in Long Island (back when they were a brick and mortar place). That was like my favorite place when I was a kid. Guess my future was set in stone even back then.

  • Anonymous

    You can buy these a lot cheaper along with a bunch of other cool stuff at http://www.pelletlab.com. Gallon of ladybugs anyone?

  • JEcklar

    I work at the National Aviary, and we host an owl pellet dissection class (“Owl Detectives”). We buy them in huge bulk from (I think) Carolina Biological. Can’t speak to the claim that many are fake, but I know from dealing with HUNDREDS of real casts over the years that the ones we get from Carolina are authentic.

    My favorite class to teach! Me and co-worker always end up spending the next hour or so finishing the dissection of any pellets left behind by squeamish 6th graders. :) Found a really cool intact Starling skull once, as well as the remnants from what was apparently a nest of baby mice (from two different pellets, of course)!

  • stuhfoo

    brings back memories I remember doing this on my desk back in 5/6th grade…

  • starbreiz

    I used to go to a nature day camp every summer and we totally did this.

  • Anonymous

    This is something most 4th graders have to do in science class. Good times. Not that crazy, though!

  • RealTegan

    Growing up, we had an owl in our neighborhood, and I brought about five of these to class once and we ended up in an impromptu science lesson during show and tell (yes, I was a strange child) as the teacher explained what they were and we pulled them open to find the little mice skeletons. Wonderful experiences. Ah, to be a kid again!

    • jamescoleuk

      Heh. I did the same. Good times. :)

  • Rob Cruickshank

    MC Paul Barman covers the topic here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtZwgFV2psw

  • Anonymous

    These are handy for homeschoolers. The real kind, not the ‘OH NO MY KID MIGHT LEARN SCIENCE’ kind. We got a kit like this for my son recently.

  • Morgan

    “Use some archaeological skills”
    Archaeology is studying material culture, not bird puke. Just sayin’

  • Anonymous

    $7.30? You’re a chump if you pay that. Easily had for < $2.00. (http://www.obdk.com/ or many others)

    With better educational materials and tools. Plus, periodically they have other types of bird puke (crows, ravens) or owls who live near swamps (frogs or bats skeletons instead of voles and mice)

    Google for “owl pellet chart” for many resources and bone maps of typical owl dinner.

  • ChrisAndHisHorseBallad

    I bought these for my wife’s kids, then went out to Chappquiddick and found a couple myself. The results were similar, and I was far more into it than they were.

  • brillow

    Its sad, but these are usually fake. When it says “sanitary” owl pellet, it means its a fake owl-pellet simulant with some animal skeleton inside.

    I suppose its possible that its been oven sterilized. I don’t think there is a company out there which would risk a lawsuit on claim that the animal waste they sold a child caused a sickness.

  • Anonymous

    Ain’t capitalism grand?

    Take Sh-t (or barf) and repackage it in a nice shiny container and charge a ton for it.

    • peterbruells

      Hasn’t got anything to do with capitalism, though the concepts of private property and trading come into place-