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 Voles - Pages on voles, AKA meadow mice or field mice depending upon what part of the world you live in. Pages devoted to the classification & behaviour of the vole, as well as useful advice on how to control vole populations and damage.
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Vole bones can be dissected from owl pellets & assembled to form whole vole skeletons. Owls are amongst voles' most common predators & eat their prey whole so dissecting their pellets is the best way to find a vole skeleton.
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Vole Skeleton
The easiest way to see the skeleton of a vole is to find the pellet of a bird of prey, which are one of the vole's most common predators. Their pellets are masses of bones, teeth, hair, feathers, scales, and insect skeletons. They are produced and regurgitated, by owls, hawks, eagles and other raptors, which swallow their prey whole or in large pieces. These pellets can then be dissected and the bones separated, identified and arranged to form a whole vole skeleton.
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Diagram showing the skeleton of a vole
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It wouldn't be easy or practical to go out and find hawk or owl pellets yourself but you can find companies that sell owl pellets to be used for dissection. Some examples can be found below:
Barn owl pellets make a wonderful learning tool that can be used to introduce students to comparative skeletal anatomy, concepts of natural history, and ecology and predator/prey relationships.
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Deluxe Owl Pellet Kit - Price: $152.00
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This deluxe kit contains 15 barn owl pellets, 8 posters (bone sorting chart, food web, vole skeleton, mole skeleton, shrew skeleton, bird skeleton, human\vole comparison and pellet formation), an illustrated instructor guide with background information, suggested teaching strategies, dichotomous skull key, projects and reference material. Also includes individual bone sorting charts.
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 Vole Skeleton Pictures - Three dimensional vole skeleton pictures can be made by dissecting owl pellets, separating and identifying individual vole bones and sticking them to card to form a complete vole skeleton.
The most relevant links we could find, placed here free
 Boreal Laboratories
- The featured deluxe owl pellet kit which can be used to dissect vole skeletons can be purchased from this website. www.boreal.com
Mountain Home Biological
- The extra large owl pellet and vole skeleton poster featured on this page can be bought here. www.pelletlab.com
For exploring skeletal anatomy and teaching food chains there is no better tool than an owl pellet! Like all raptors the Barn Owl will regurgitate indigestible remains of its prey: hair, bone and feathers. Individual prey can be identified and re-assembled, which allows the diet of the owl itself to be studied.
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Extra large owl pellet
Price: $1.65
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These pellets are collected from natural owl habitats in the Pacific N.W. Each pellet is then graded, dried, heat-treated and wrapped These extra large pellets are 2 inches or longer, the example above contained the remains of 6 prey!
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Skeleton of a vole poster
Price: $2.40
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This poster is sized 18" x 24" and is printed on heavy paper. It illustrates and names all the major bones which form the skeleton of a vole Transparencies are also available.
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