One of the cool things about living where I do, essentially the middle of nowhere by most standards, is getting to see lots of cool wildlife on a regular basis. That includes occasionally seeing owls when I’m walking my dogs at dawn and dusk. With owls come owl pellets that are fun to pick up and dissect. What is an owl pellet? That is the topic of the latest SciShow Kids video embedded below.

Unfortunately, most students don’t get the experience of walking in the woods and finding owl pellets. You can order owl pellets from a science lab supply company or you could have your students virtually dissect an owl pellet. Kid Wings is a website all about birds. The site includes a virtual owl pellet dissection activity. In the virtual owl pellet dissection students pick apart an owl pellet, examine the bones inside it, then match those bones to the skeleton outline they’ve been provided. The names of the bones are read aloud to students when they click on the bones in the virtual activity.