Poo is something that fascinates us all, let's be perfectly honest. But human poo has got nothing on the diverse world of animal faeces.
Some species eat their own scat, while others shape it into cubes, and others use it to offset carbon. Whether it's helping the planet, feeding a baby or scaring off predators, animal droppings can do a lot more than just process food. Here are some weird and wonderful faecal facts from the wildlife world.
Poo facts
1. Sperm whales are carbon neutral – thanks to their poo
Sperm whale poo helps stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, which captures huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere – enough to offset the carbon released by the whales when they breathe out. This makes them carbon neutral.
2. Bird poo is white because of... pee
Unlike mammals, birds don’t have separate exits for urine and faeces. Instead, everything comes out of the cloaca, which allows for both functions. As a result, bird droppings contain materials from both the uterine and faecal functions – and it is the urine that is responsible for the white appearance in bird droppings. The urates have deposits of white crystals of uric acid, which is what gives the poo this white appearance.
3. It's once a week for sloths
Sloths have to come to the ground to poo and only poo once every 5-7 days. B ut why they have to go to the ground to poo is not understood as it leaves them vulnerable to predators. This question has puzzled researchers for decades and still remains unanswered.
Several hypotheses have been proposed, including a supposed mutualistic relationship between sloths and their preferred tree, which would be fertilized by the nutrients released by the sloths' faeces and urine.
4. Rabbits and hares eat their own poop
All lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) eat their own droppings as soon as they pass them. This process is known as refection, and it allows animals to get additional nutrition from their food. Learn more about how to identify different animal poo here.
5. Pine martens’ poo is twisted, because they wiggle their butts while they’re defecating
Pine marten poo is very easy to spot, thanks to its long, thin, coiled shape. This is because when they’re defecating, they wriggle their hips, which results in twisted poo. This can sometimes become blue in summer, when bilberries become a major part of a pine marten’s diet.
6. Wombats’ poo is cube-shaped
The Australian marsupial’s stools are famously easy to spot, as they are a uniquely cube-shaped. A wombat can excrete as many as 100 of these cube-shaped poops in one night.
7. Koala pups eat their mother’s faeces to acquire the necessary bacteria for processing food
In order to digest their local primary food source, eucalyptus, baby koalas (joeys) need to eat a liquefied form of their mother’s faeces, known as ‘pap’. The baby koala starts eating this towards the end of its time in the pouch. This inspired the medial procedure, known as poo transplants, in humans, where faeces is transferred from a healthy donor to the colon of a patient to treat severe bacterial infections.
8. Seed-filled orangutan poo is great for biodiversity
Orangutans are vital seed dispensers, depositing huge numbers of seeds in their faeces across a wide area. This helps disperse seeds from a parent plant, so scientists are worried – for more than one reason – about the threat to orangutans and their declining populations.
9. Poo fossils
There is such a thing as fossilised poo. In fact there's an Arizona museum that has approximately 8,000 pieces of fossilised faeces, including a 67.5cm whopper thought to come from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.