 |
| Owl Pellet lab |
 |
| Skeleton |
This unit was about the skeletal system. We learned about the different bones, their functions, bone disorders, and what they're made of. The bones support the body, protects our soft organs, stores minerals, blood cell formation, and when attached to skeletal muscles, movement. We also learned that there are two types of bone tissue, compact bone and spongy bone. Compact bone is homogenous and spongy bone is small needle like pieces of bone, and has many open spaces. Mr. Orre taught us that Ca and P are the minerals that make bones hard, and collagen makes them strong and allows flexibility. Osteoblasts and osteoclasts are apart of a process called bone remodeling. Osteoclasts destroy bone cells, they break down bone for remodeling and calcium release, osteoblasts are bone forming cells. Bones are classified by their shape, there are long bones, short bones, flat bones and irregular bones. Some of the bone disorders we learned about were osteoporosis (porous bones), scoliosis (curvature of spine), Kyphosis (Curvature of thoracic spine), lordosis (curvature of lumbar spine), and rickets (softening or weakening of bones). Ossification is the process by which bone forms, and it begins 6-7 months before birth and continues until your about 25 years old. In the future I would like to learn more about treatments to bone disorders.
 |
Bone slide
|
We did an Owl Pellet lab, where we dissected owl pellets and tried to figure out what type of animal the owl ate. We had to look at the bones we found and try to match them to other animal bones. Our owl pellet was 5.69 grams, 9 cm long and 2 cm wide. In it we found two skulls and a lot of very small bones. The skulls were 3.5 cm long, 2.5 cm wide and the lower jaw was 2.5 cm long and 1 cm wide. Looking at the charts and information we were given, we decided that it was a vole. The first thing we saw was the humerus, the bone has a part that pokes out and it matched the picture we had of a vole's humerus. Then the skull has a curve right after the front of the mouth and then in the back there were teeth and the vole was the only animal that has a skull with this shape. Also the lower jaw we found has the same shape as a vole. The ribs that we found in our owl pellet are very similar to ribs on a human, they are the same shape. The back bones we found were similar to human back bones because they lined up like human spines do. We found a bone which we thought was the femur and it was pretty similar to the human femur, it was the same shape and had the ball in socket joint. Some things we found different was the humerus, the bone poked out at a point and the human bone doesn't do that. Also the tibia and fibula were reversed, in the human skeleton the tibia is bigger than the fibula but in the vole, the fibula is bigger than the tibia and they were also connected. Another difference we found was in the skull, it has very big eye sockets and the mouth is a lot different. Overall we learned a lot about the differences in these bones and human bones, and also it was interesting to see what owls eat and to take apart the owl pellets.
