Buzz
While everyone experiences the natural act of pooping, not all of us do it the same way. Nature has crafted various methods to manage this process, ensuring that poop doesn’t just go to waste but can actually serve a practical purpose. Some of the things people do with animal poop are just as surprising as they are off-putting.
10. Baby Birds Poop Right Into Their Parents' Faces
Many baby birds, particularly altricial ones (those needing constant care in the nest), produce what are known as fecal sacs. Their digestive systems encase their waste in a tough membrane, almost like a built-in waste bag. When these little birds poop, they direct their backsides toward their parents, allowing mom and dad to either eat it or carry it away to keep the nest clean.
At an early age, a baby bird’s digestive system can’t process much of its food, meaning their poop is packed with undigested nutrients. So, when they poop, they’re providing a nutritious snack for their parents. As they grow, however, the bacteria in their digestive system strengthens, so the parents stop eating their poop. (Although in some species, parents continue this practice throughout the nesting period.) Yummy!
9. Some Baby Animals Rely on Eating Their Parents' Poop
If you own a pet rabbit, you might have noticed it munching on its own droppings. Rabbits are known for eating their poop because their digestive systems aren’t strong enough to extract all the nutrients from their food on the first go. By eating their own excrement, they make sure none of the nutritional value goes to waste. However, some rabbit breeders have noticed that mother rabbits often feed their own poop to their babies. In this case, researchers believe the reason is likely not for nutrition but for the bacteria.
Baby rabbits, along with animals like pandas and hippos, gain benefits from consuming their parents’ waste. The bacteria in the gut biome of a species is typically specific to that species. Baby animals can only access the necessary bacteria for digestion by eating their parents’ poop. This helps them build the gut bacteria needed to digest food once they mature.
8. Four-Foot Poop Squirt Turns Into Laughing Gas
Just as some birds create fecal sacs to keep their nests tidy, penguins have their own unique method of waste disposal. Scientists recently studied penguins' rectal pressure and discovered that they can expel their poop with such force that it can shoot up to four feet away. While a penguin on the ground can launch their liquid poop about 0.4 meters, placing them on an elevated surface allows them to squirt it up to a remarkable four feet.
Penguin poop is rich in nitrogen, thanks to their diet. When it lands on the soil, bacteria convert it into nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, which dentists use during procedures. And it’s not a small amount, either. Researchers studying king penguins in Antarctica began feeling nauseous, suffering from headaches, and acting strangely after spending hours in guano, likely due to exposure to the gas.
7. Turning Poop Into Paper
Pandas spend the majority of their day eating, which results in a significant amount of time spent pooping. They can produce up to 10kg (22lbs) of poop daily. For panda conservation centers and zoos, dealing with the massive amount of waste can become costly. In an effort to reduce this expense, they took inspiration from elephant conservatories.
Elephants can generate as much as 50kg of poop per day, much of which consists of fibrous plant material. After sanitization, these fibers can be transformed into paper, which is then sold. Given that panda poop is made up of 70% indigestible bamboo fibers, it can also be turned into a variety of products, including toilet paper and tissues. And who wouldn’t want to use something that came from such a cute animal’s behind, right?
6. Hippos’ Enormous Poop Destroys Fish
If you’ve ever witnessed a hippo defecating on land, it's best to step back. They use their tails to fling their poop up to 10 meters, marking their territory. While this may seem repulsive, the real issue arises when they poop in the water, which harms fish populations.
As one of the largest land creatures, hippos produce an enormous amount of waste. Though they graze on land at night, they spend a significant portion of their day submerged in water to avoid the sun. And they poop in the water—constantly. Researchers studying the hippos in the Mara River, which runs along the Tanzania-Kenya border, discovered that the population of 4,000 hippos releases around 8,500kg of dung into the river daily. The waste settles on the riverbed, and during dry seasons, it releases harmful chemicals, depleting oxygen levels that fish need to survive. If heavy rain stirs up the sediment, it creates a “flushing flow” that suffocates large numbers of fish.
That was the hypothesis, at least. To confirm it, researchers collected 16,000 liters of hippo-poop-contaminated water and transported it to a pool used by hippos. They divided the pool with sandbags and added the soiled water. Once the sandbags were removed, simulating a flushing effect, the researchers observed a significant drop in oxygen levels as anticipated.
5. The Poop Dance of the Sloth
Sloths are notoriously slow, and their digestive system mirrors this pace. They can take up to a month to digest their food. As a result, they only need to relieve themselves about once a week. But when they do, they make it count.
When a sloth relieves itself, it can lose up to a third of its body weight. To put that into perspective, it's like a human defecating 20kg (45 pounds) in one go. Oddly, about half of sloth fatalities occur when they venture out of their trees, yet they still climb all the way down to do their business.
Once they've made their way down, sloths clear a spot by scraping away dirt, then squat to poop while standing upright, before covering it up in what some describe as a 'poo dance.' Some researchers speculate that this unusual behavior helps create a place for the moths that live in their fur to lay their eggs, though not all scientists agree. However, there’s consensus that this seemingly risky ritual must serve an important evolutionary purpose.
4. Pasty Butt, a Killer of Baby Chicks
A leading cause of death for baby chicks is a condition known as pasty butt. As chicks' digestive systems are still maturing, they often struggle to properly process their food. Under stress, their poop can become just the right consistency to become lodged around their vents.
Pasty butt occurs when poop accumulates around a chick’s rear, blocking its ability to excrete waste. When this happens, the backed-up feces cause fatal obstruction within two days if untreated.
Luckily for baby chicks, constipation isn’t a death sentence. A warm washcloth can do the trick to clean their tiny bottoms. In more severe cases, a gentle massage might be needed to help them relieve themselves. It’s also wise to apply some vaseline afterward, since, as mentioned in another article, chickens are known to be cannibalistic. If a chick’s vent is exposed or injured, it may attract other chicks to peck at it, potentially causing fatal damage.
3. The Poop at the Bottom of the Sea
When researchers began exploring the deep ocean, they observed a peculiar white substance drifting down like snow. They dubbed it 'marine snow' due to its resemblance to terrestrial snowfall. What they discovered was that this was actually organic material from the ocean’s surface slowly descending to the ocean floor. Marine snow consists not only of sand and dust but also of decaying plants, animals, and large amounts of marine animal waste.
Marine snow takes several weeks to reach the ocean floor and is estimated to cover three-quarters of it. At the bottom, it transforms into a thick, gooey mixture of decaying life and excrement, accumulating at a rate of about six meters every million years. Given that the ocean floor has been the planet’s burial ground and toilet for millennia, it’s easy to imagine just how much of the Earth is covered in a vast layer of ancient waste.
2. Mandrills Use Poop to Social Distance
At the time of writing, the world is grappling with the widespread presence of the coronavirus, making social distancing more common than ever. However, avoiding contact with someone exhibiting symptoms of illness isn't a behavior exclusive to humans. Mandrill monkeys have been practicing social distancing for centuries. Living in large groups, they use the scent of each other’s feces to identify potential threats and know who to keep their distance from.
Mandrills can contract a parasite that alters their body odor, and this change also impacts the scent of their feces. By simply sniffing another mandrill’s droppings, they can detect if the individual is infected. Upon detecting the scent of parasites in another's waste, a mandrill will initiate social distancing.
Though mandrills generally avoid infected members, they don’t entirely isolate them. Occasionally, they’ll break their self-imposed quarantine to offer grooming. However, they steer clear of the infected monkey’s anal region to prevent ingesting any parasites. Perhaps this is their version of wearing a mask.
1. Poop, Cubed
The shape of excrement may not often cross our minds, but if we pause to think about it, the notion of cube-shaped poop likely doesn’t spring to mind. For wombats, however, having cube-shaped droppings proves to be highly practical for their daily lives.
Wombats use their poop as a means of communication. As burrowers, they create piles of their droppings on the surface to signal their presence to other wombats. These small poop mounds act like a pungent flag, alerting others to their location, especially during mating season. The cube shape of their poop makes it easier for them to say ‘hello,’ as it won’t roll away and topple their ‘fecal mountain.’
Wombats are the only known animals to produce cubed poop. This quirky phenomenon puzzled scientists for some time, though it wasn’t widely investigated. Eventually, a few researchers took on the challenge and discovered that in the final 25% of the wombat's intestines, the fluid in their digestive system solidifies. The elasticity of the last 8% of the intestines is so specific that it molds the poop into cubes. Evolution at its finest.
