All items sold on this website are polyurethane resin replicas, made in USA. No real or natural bone is available on this site.
Pelecanus Skull Replicas are museum quality, polyurethane resin casts Made in USA. Pelecanus Skull replicas available are the Brown Pelican & White Pelican Skulls.
Brown Pelican Skull Replica measures 16.6 inches and our American White Pelican Skull Replica measures 17.0 inches. Both skulls feature 2-part skulls (separate cranium & jaw). Made in USA. Casts of Original California Academy of Sciences specimen.
The bill-pouch is elastic skin attached along the branches of the lower mandible and down the front of the throat, additionally supported and controlled by a greatly enlarged hyoid bone. The branches of the mandible are very flexible and the skin is very distensible.
A large volume of water can be taken in with the mouth full of fish. The bird surfaces and the upper mandible, serving only as a lid to the pouch, is clamped shut. The head is tipped and water is drained out along the margins of the lower mandible. The fish are kept in, much like ice in a slot-lidded pitcher.
The fish are then swallowed whole. If the fish require turning to facilitate swallowing head-first, the bill has a small hook, called the nail, on the tip to hold the slippery fish while it is turned.
One species, the brown pelican captures fish by a spectacular plunge from the air, but other species swim in formation, driving small schools of fish into shoal water where they are scooped up by the birds.
