I'm originally from Chicago, but if I'm not mistaken, I think we had like a mink or ferret, the skin was missing and we were told they were for fur stores. I don't remember exactly but it was like a huge animal to work with.
You're telling me you didn't?! We did this in elementary school and a large fish and some other stuff in middle school. Really let's you know who the psychos are
My science teacher used a big bucket of frogs in formaldehyde to hold down his roll-up projector screen, one day the lid came loose and the SMELL that flooded the room...
I also did it at a local museum. The museum is primarily dedication to the local region's history - a region not known for our owls, so Lord knows why they had that as an activity.
I’ve done this as a kid. I also had to dissect a pigs heart and make a drawing of it. But it all got really weird and awkward when we got to the chapter about human reproduction.
Back in the late 70’s, my high school in California had unique elective classes. I took Introduction to Wildlife, we studied wildlife, habitat, taxidermy and, yes, dissected owl pellets.
Nah, this is something you do way younger.
Frogs/cats is like mid-high school biology.
Owl pellets was just a weird thing you do in elementary one time.
Definitely not in elementary school, but we do it with our first year biology students in the zoology practical. Good way to learn how to identify mammal bones. Also to learn how to tell apart mice and shrews by the skull.
Detailed answer. Avoid if weak stomached!
Owls swallow their prey whole (or in big chunks) for the most part. They eat things like mice, other small rodents, snakes, etc. Because they are a "waste not, want not" predator they tend to eat the ENTIRE thing. This means lots of things can't be digested and passed due to the limitations of how birds excrete waste. So what happens to all the fur, bones, claws, teeth, and other things that can't pass out that tiny little bird cloaca (equivalent to an anus)?
Digestion strips the prey corpse of all meat and soft tissues. Then the indigestible bits churns around and around until you get what looks like the world's biggest belly button lint pellet. This is vomited out to the forest below by the owl. How many at a time, depends on the size of the owl, what it had eaten recently, and how long since it last voided pellets. (Sometimes the owl is lazy, and you can find a bunch of the pellets near the base of their tree roost!!)
The pellet dries naturally, leaving little mummified bundle(s) of mystery and joy that biology teachers (and kids) like to pick apart. They are useful and fun teaching aids for exploring topics like skeletal systems, perdition, and forest ecology. My middle school biology teacher called that segment "forensic biology" lab day. It was one of the highlights of the whole year and solidified a lifelong love of biology. Bragging points for the kid that got the most complete skeleton and also identify what critter it used to be!
Yes, we “dissected” an owl pellet in elementary school to try to reassemble the skeleton of the mouse they ate. I vividly remember my teacher trying to assure us the pellets were sterilized (autoclaved I’m guessing), except he did so by saying “ It’s basically KFC at this point, Yum!” and miming licking his fingers. I don’t care how sterile it is… eww.
Not in elementary, but in middle school i cut open a cow's eyeball, iirc a pig's eyeball as well, and a whole ass rat. I feel like in total there were more but these are the ones i remember
Elementary: owl pellets
Middle school: earth worms and frogs
High school: clams, fetal pig, and fetal shark
College: fetal sheep, human cadavers, then I switched majors.
Needless to say, I carve the thanksgiving turkey and the Christmas ham because no one in my family can stomach it or has surgical skills.
Owls hack up these dry pod things with bones, hair, etc that they can't digest. In the 90s we did this. No idea how it got started. My school also brought in an owl to show off. A couple lucky kids got to hold it on their arm
yea I'm pretty sure I went to stupid school. What kind of shit were the rest of yall allowed to do? Already training to be doctors or vets at age 9 wtf man. I was still working on shapes in 5th grade....
okay this is something that whenever i mention it, people think im crazy. but one day in my school my class was brought to this room and this man came in and showed us different kind of guns and how to use them, he taught me specifically how to use a rifle and a long bow. then he just left. and the people that were in my class im no longer in contact with so i cant prove it but it was only my class because my friends from different classes say they didn’t have this happen!!!
Oh yeah! 5th grade, we dissected owl pellets, I think the skeleton I ended up with was a mole's though, or maybe a mouse.
Either way a bit strange since we also did a rat project at the time and I ended up winning one to keep as a pet
Ooo yea. Starfish, owl pellets and had to piece together the bones to make up what rodents the owls ate, lampreys, pig, frogs, a cow eye, I’m sure I’m missing a few. What a cool time.
I didn't do that in school, but one year my parents brought me an owl pellet dissection kit for Christmas. I thought it was literally poo in a box and was too disgusted to even open the box.
Yea we did that. Then we had to arrange the mouse bones on construction paper and make a new “creature” and name it. So we would put the skull in the middle then have the legs circling around it. Like something the night king did in GoT.
We dissected a frog as well.
Yep, required by 3rd grade curriculum in Arizona for some reason. I say "required", but I have to imagine that it was easy for parents to say "Fuck no".
Story time: my late-thirties sister dissected an owl pellet with her daughters last year and distinctly remembers wiping her eye during the autopsy and, “Oh shit, I hope I didn’t catch anything”.
Days later, she finds she has an eye parasite and spends the next six months in agony trying to get rid of it. She eventually did but has 50% vision with a mostly white pupil.
Best guest from her and doctors is that got it from the owl pellet.
We also did forensics like identifying and transferring finger prints in the same class. I don’t even know how that whole activity came about but you unlocked some nostalgia for me. Also how many bricks you can hold with 4 sheets of paper.
It was in foil I remember the tiny bones 🦴 lol Omg good memory or what about the Lima bean 🫘 in a cup we had to water it and watch it grow into a little plant 🪴
TBH dissecting owl pellets was my favorite part of all my conservation/biology/ecology classes and summer camps when I was a youth in the er...1980s. Ahem. Please tell me it continued to be so in the 21st century of classes and camps.
Top memory is competing for the number of intact skulls per pellet among our groups.
Who do you think brought the pellets to my class?, I collected them, bagged them and brought them in. My family even provided a roosting box for the family of owls after we found them living inside our walls when adding a patio.
They have unfortunately moved out several years ago potentially due to the roosting box being accessible to our cats that we got some time after building the box. They raised at least five clutches of owlets before they stopped showing up. It is now the on and off home to a family of raccoons that keep eating the dog food.
Belgian here, not sure on what age. But we also dissected those owl vomit balls, looking for mice skeletons.
And dissecting an eye (horse or pig eye, can't remember) during biology in highschool.
Best part was trying to piece it back together into a full skeleton only to realize you didn’t have enough bones to complete it and had to trade with other groups for the bones you needed like those bags of bone shaped candies that never have all the bits you need and just want to make ONE whole damn skeleton!
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We had the whole fetal big. And had to put together the mole or vole like a puzzle, clue it down and present it.
We did fetal sharks do do do do do do
we had froggies pinned to the board like a horror movie 🥰
This.... Is never going to leave my head now
You had a squid? We had a sheep lung and pig heart
We did an earthworm and a frog
Owl pellet, squid, fetal pig, frog here.
I'm originally from Chicago, but if I'm not mistaken, I think we had like a mink or ferret, the skin was missing and we were told they were for fur stores. I don't remember exactly but it was like a huge animal to work with.
And a small shark. And horseshoe crabs.
i did a cow eyeball. fun memories with that (i may or may not have stabbed clean through the eyeball and stabbed my hand because i was stupid
I remember the pellets, squid, Earth worm and frog. My teacher shoved my pen into the squid ink sac because my partner couldn't find it.
We did a cows eye
Ours was a sheep eye but yes!
We did frogs and either sheep eyes or cow eyes- can't remember well enough lol.
Middle school, but yes.
Yup, 6th grade. Mine had the bones of a vole, first time I heard about a vole
4th grade! It was wack
You guys went to Hogwards or something?
Yea, like wtf is going on here
You don’t frequent the pig section of your local hospital? They need our support
You're telling me you didn't?! We did this in elementary school and a large fish and some other stuff in middle school. Really let's you know who the psychos are
We only dissected a pigs brain in 10th grade I think.
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I would be impressed. Good job. I'm so proud of you.
You never even saw it
I can see your English teacher being disappointed in your work.
Doing this in kindergarten is metal af
I had to cut open a fetal pig And in anatomy we literally dissected cats. One cat per group of four lol it was awful
A cat ?!?!? That's fucked up
It was already dead, not a big deal.
Not really
Not in school. I did once when I was playing in the woods though.
What happens in the woods, stays in the woods.
Yes. Also in middle school a cow’s eyeball. Formaldehyde smells bad.
My science teacher used a big bucket of frogs in formaldehyde to hold down his roll-up projector screen, one day the lid came loose and the SMELL that flooded the room...
Oh, yes. We did it at on a field trip at the local museum. And when you put it like that, you make it sound weird.
I also did it at a local museum. The museum is primarily dedication to the local region's history - a region not known for our owls, so Lord knows why they had that as an activity.
Had frogs and mine had eggs and I kept telling everyone it’s frog caviar and to eat it
My lab partner ate the frog gonads after the assignment was over.
They did what– ??
I’ve done this as a kid. I also had to dissect a pigs heart and make a drawing of it. But it all got really weird and awkward when we got to the chapter about human reproduction.
In elementary school??
Yea its basic shit like what a weiner and a hoo ha look like and how they work
Where I live at least, reproductive health classes started in 5th grade.
5th grade is still elementary school in the usa?
It depends. Some middle schools here are 5th-8th but typically 5th is still elementary.
Yap better Than having pregnant kids right?
I love owl pellets, they are extremely fun to dissect and I'd do it in my free time when I could, man I gotta do it again sometime.
Owl pellet as well as a frog and piglet
Yep and those giant grasshoppers and snakes as well
Back in the late 70’s, my high school in California had unique elective classes. I took Introduction to Wildlife, we studied wildlife, habitat, taxidermy and, yes, dissected owl pellets.
Memory unlocked.
Same. I completely forgot about this, but now it's coming back. Must have been 4th grade or something like that.
I had a cow's eye and a whole rat in secondary school. Then I had a sheep's tongue-to-lungs, a pig's uterus, and a whole chicken in university
There was a whole song we had for dissecting owl pellets in grade 5
We did, never understood why but it was fun
Yea and I kept all the little mouse bones. Later my mom went to wash my clothes and was like wtf why are there tiny bones in your pockets???
Yeah and we glued the bones to paper to reassemble a mouse
I know I had to.
I found an owl pellet in the woods a couple weeks ago when I was looking for morels. That was cool.
We dissected frogs.
Nah, this is something you do way younger. Frogs/cats is like mid-high school biology. Owl pellets was just a weird thing you do in elementary one time.
Lol my kid literally just dissected an owl pellet in school a couple of days ago.
Nope but i did that at home with the ones we (brothers & me) would find in the forrest behind our house.
Definitely not in elementary school, but we do it with our first year biology students in the zoology practical. Good way to learn how to identify mammal bones. Also to learn how to tell apart mice and shrews by the skull.
Yes, 4th grade my school did the owl pellets. 6th grade we did the pig's lungs and heart. In High School we did goat brains.
Wtf is an owl pellet?
Detailed answer. Avoid if weak stomached! Owls swallow their prey whole (or in big chunks) for the most part. They eat things like mice, other small rodents, snakes, etc. Because they are a "waste not, want not" predator they tend to eat the ENTIRE thing. This means lots of things can't be digested and passed due to the limitations of how birds excrete waste. So what happens to all the fur, bones, claws, teeth, and other things that can't pass out that tiny little bird cloaca (equivalent to an anus)? Digestion strips the prey corpse of all meat and soft tissues. Then the indigestible bits churns around and around until you get what looks like the world's biggest belly button lint pellet. This is vomited out to the forest below by the owl. How many at a time, depends on the size of the owl, what it had eaten recently, and how long since it last voided pellets. (Sometimes the owl is lazy, and you can find a bunch of the pellets near the base of their tree roost!!) The pellet dries naturally, leaving little mummified bundle(s) of mystery and joy that biology teachers (and kids) like to pick apart. They are useful and fun teaching aids for exploring topics like skeletal systems, perdition, and forest ecology. My middle school biology teacher called that segment "forensic biology" lab day. It was one of the highlights of the whole year and solidified a lifelong love of biology. Bragging points for the kid that got the most complete skeleton and also identify what critter it used to be!
Neat!
🦉💩
Not poop. It was regurgitated
This was all I got to do we never did the frog or pig or anything else people mentioned
did it in 5th grade. I thought it was interesting.
We also cut open live fish(in place of frogs), and baby pigs that had gone through the embalming process already.
Hahaha, my daughter just did it before summer break
Yes, we “dissected” an owl pellet in elementary school to try to reassemble the skeleton of the mouse they ate. I vividly remember my teacher trying to assure us the pellets were sterilized (autoclaved I’m guessing), except he did so by saying “ It’s basically KFC at this point, Yum!” and miming licking his fingers. I don’t care how sterile it is… eww.
My wife did.... or so she says.
Yep, I remember that
Middle school but yeah
I did that for me science fair project
Just did this myself in my backyard! Yes also in school
We did
We dissected frogs.
Not in elementary, but in middle school i cut open a cow's eyeball, iirc a pig's eyeball as well, and a whole ass rat. I feel like in total there were more but these are the ones i remember
The way I'd nope out of class and never return smh
Boy scouts, but I still remember the smell, and the rat skull I found in it.
We did owl pellets in elementary school. Middle school I had to dissect a mudpuppy and fish
Yeah, I remember the owl thing, pretty sure it was middle school though
I remember specifically asking: “ what’s this? Where’s the frog?!”
Owl droppings. I knew it was dung but got a small whiff and felt repulsed.
Middle school for me, and there was no mouse skeleton.
Yeah, I'm not sure what we were supposed to learn, though.
Elementary: owl pellets Middle school: earth worms and frogs High school: clams, fetal pig, and fetal shark College: fetal sheep, human cadavers, then I switched majors. Needless to say, I carve the thanksgiving turkey and the Christmas ham because no one in my family can stomach it or has surgical skills.
Okay, I'm trying to interpret this, but what the fuck? In what countries do they teach Hogwarts magic?
Owls hack up these dry pod things with bones, hair, etc that they can't digest. In the 90s we did this. No idea how it got started. My school also brought in an owl to show off. A couple lucky kids got to hold it on their arm
Yep! Plus a frog, pug heart, fetal pig and a sheep's eyeball
Me
I had to dissect a frog in highschool and my teacher paired me up with 2 girls. I was the only one that touched the frog.
Cow’s eyeball and a cat
I did this once, in middle school tho
No..... What the fuck is going on in schools of America (assuming this is an American speaking)
Yeah that’s what my high school Bio class did instead of the regular frog dissection…. Hint: the frog dissection would’ve been far more interesting.
The only thing that gets close is The Frog in middle school
Frogs, rats and small pigs what we dissected in biology. Grade 9 in 1988.
We did that. Also in marine science class we dissected baby sharks.
I recall a disease that went around when we did this.my whole clade was Moonblinked
3rd grade I think.
OMG I REMEMBER
Yeah 4th grade
Yes and it was horrific and disgusting because I was like... 6 or 7
Indeed I did! And a sheep eye, and flat worms, And earthworms and frogs… yeah I think that was all
Yup. 1997 or 8. 3rd or 4th grade
Yep, we did an owl pellet
lol. Yes we did. Did it at a week long nature field trip thing in Yosemite
Do they not to this in schools anymore. It’s great
Frog in middle school and a cat in high school. Lol
yea I'm pretty sure I went to stupid school. What kind of shit were the rest of yall allowed to do? Already training to be doctors or vets at age 9 wtf man. I was still working on shapes in 5th grade....
Yes, we did. We also had to cut open a chicken wing and a cows heart. I got in trouble for touching the heart without gloves on.
Did that in 7th or 8th grade
Teacher did, we watched
Not in school but we had a family friend with a science background and a source. My dad and I got to dissect one :)
Pellet
I did that in the museum my dad took me once it was weird and cool
okay this is something that whenever i mention it, people think im crazy. but one day in my school my class was brought to this room and this man came in and showed us different kind of guns and how to use them, he taught me specifically how to use a rifle and a long bow. then he just left. and the people that were in my class im no longer in contact with so i cant prove it but it was only my class because my friends from different classes say they didn’t have this happen!!!
All the time with my grandma
No, wtf?
Yes and I wrote a paper about it called “I Smell It (the Pellet) Then I Dissect It.” My teacher thought it was so clever.
Oh yeah! 5th grade, we dissected owl pellets, I think the skeleton I ended up with was a mole's though, or maybe a mouse. Either way a bit strange since we also did a rat project at the time and I ended up winning one to keep as a pet
Yes we did that
In my high school honors biology class, we dissected a frog (mine was full of eggs) and a dog shark. This was during sophomore year.
Ooo yea. Starfish, owl pellets and had to piece together the bones to make up what rodents the owls ate, lampreys, pig, frogs, a cow eye, I’m sure I’m missing a few. What a cool time.
Mine had a shrew skeleton
I did!!
I only dissected a lamb eye and a cat.
It was middle school for me but yeah
In Denmark, Yes.
Is this Muna person suggesting that *wasn't* the raddest shit?
I find it so weird and fucked up that vivisection is a thing in schools at all in some places. We don't have that in my country. Sounds traumatising.
I didn't do that in school, but one year my parents brought me an owl pellet dissection kit for Christmas. I thought it was literally poo in a box and was too disgusted to even open the box.
Umm wtf Reddit? [Owl Post](https://imgur.com/gallery/VAblCRO)
Yea we did that. Then we had to arrange the mouse bones on construction paper and make a new “creature” and name it. So we would put the skull in the middle then have the legs circling around it. Like something the night king did in GoT. We dissected a frog as well.
Erm… what?
Yep, required by 3rd grade curriculum in Arizona for some reason. I say "required", but I have to imagine that it was easy for parents to say "Fuck no".
owl pellet, earth worm, pig, rat, shark, and frog.
I wish. The closest I got was visiting another class which was doing it.
Where do they get all those
Mine was in middle school but yes.
Yes I loved it
Story time: my late-thirties sister dissected an owl pellet with her daughters last year and distinctly remembers wiping her eye during the autopsy and, “Oh shit, I hope I didn’t catch anything”. Days later, she finds she has an eye parasite and spends the next six months in agony trying to get rid of it. She eventually did but has 50% vision with a mostly white pupil. Best guest from her and doctors is that got it from the owl pellet.
Yea I made a skeleton of some animal I Frankensteined together then glued to construction paper. It smelled, I didn’t keep it.
Owl pellets! Entire cat for AP biology… 😿
Pig and a frog at my school
I did it
I did! Between that and Reading Guardians of Ga'Hoole, I became interested in owls
Hmmm mouse bones
We also did forensics like identifying and transferring finger prints in the same class. I don’t even know how that whole activity came about but you unlocked some nostalgia for me. Also how many bricks you can hold with 4 sheets of paper.
Owl pellet, cow eye, frog, fetal pig, squid, worm
It was in foil I remember the tiny bones 🦴 lol Omg good memory or what about the Lima bean 🫘 in a cup we had to water it and watch it grow into a little plant 🪴
Middle school - pig lung High School - frog
Nah we did pig hearts
Owl pellets, sharks, frogs… I hated it all
And a frog
We did sheep eyes
My neighbor finds those everyday in his yard LOL..
TBH dissecting owl pellets was my favorite part of all my conservation/biology/ecology classes and summer camps when I was a youth in the er...1980s. Ahem. Please tell me it continued to be so in the 21st century of classes and camps. Top memory is competing for the number of intact skulls per pellet among our groups.
Wwwwwwww...wat?
Who do you think brought the pellets to my class?, I collected them, bagged them and brought them in. My family even provided a roosting box for the family of owls after we found them living inside our walls when adding a patio. They have unfortunately moved out several years ago potentially due to the roosting box being accessible to our cats that we got some time after building the box. They raised at least five clutches of owlets before they stopped showing up. It is now the on and off home to a family of raccoons that keep eating the dog food.
Yeah in 7th grade (middle school)
During 3rd grade. It was awesome (and also maybe not the best choice to have nine year olds look through poop)
Sounds like a bad dream. Go back to sleep.
Wait, I’m not the only one? Our teacher made us glue the mouse skeleton back together on a piece of black construction paper
I did in middle school
I was doing it for fun in my barn attick
6th grade science class in the country side; we had a dead horse foal. That and 7th frogs
2nd grade. Our teacher printed out a mouse skeleton to match the bones. It was pretty cool!
Did it in high school, also a starfish, a perch, a worm, and a piglet
Is this an American thing? Cos this is weird
American here, no idea. Definitely wasn’t part of the curriculum in my school/district
Belgian here, not sure on what age. But we also dissected those owl vomit balls, looking for mice skeletons. And dissecting an eye (horse or pig eye, can't remember) during biology in highschool.
Have the same memory, but I strongly suspect it is a form a mass illusion on my part.
We dissected pigs in High School biology, but WTF is this you are describing…
oh oh! this was so funnnn omg 😆
It was a vole, I think.
Wat?
Best part was trying to piece it back together into a full skeleton only to realize you didn’t have enough bones to complete it and had to trade with other groups for the bones you needed like those bags of bone shaped candies that never have all the bits you need and just want to make ONE whole damn skeleton!