This work is based on a data base of records from the Collezione Microteriologica L. Contoli and other collections of small mammal skull from Italy. To emphasize the peculiarities of collections based on the pellet contents of different reptor species, we made a comparison with conventional (trappind-based) collections in Italy. We used dat on rodents from the peninsular regions of Italy south of the Po river. There is a strong direct correlation between the number of individuals of rodent species sampled by traps and by predators. This is emphasized by the low correlation with respect to regions of Italy, due to the independence of these sampling methods. Up to now, sampling in the Italian regions was significantly richer in number of specimens in pellets than in traps, up to 2-3 orders of magnitude of difference. At the species level, pellet-sampling was significantly richer and more fruitful in number of specimens than trap-sampling.