Everybody poops, but not everybody poops the same. And not everybody does the same things with it. Nature has developed a number of usual ways of dealing with number two in order to make sure that poop doesn’t end up as just waste, but a useful tool. Even what people do with animal poop can be just as surprising as it is disgusting.
#1 Baby Birds Poop In Their Parent’s Faces
Many altricial baby birds (birds that require constant care in the nest) create what are called fecal sacs. Their intestines encase their poop in a strong membrane, almost like a built-in poop bag. When one of these baby birds poop, they aim their butts towards their parents so that mom and dad can pluck it right out of their behinds to either eat it, or fly it away to keep the nest clean.When a baby bird is very young, it’s digestive system is too weak to digest a lot of what they eat, so their poop retains a lot of undigested nutrition. Essentially, by pooping, they are making a healthy snack for their parents. As a baby bird grows older, however, the bacteria in their guts becomes stronger, so mom and dad stop eating their kids’ poop. (Although some species eat their baby’s poop throughout the entire nesting period.) Yum!
#2 Pandas
Pandas pretty much spend the entire day eating, which means they also spend a lot of time pooping. Pandas can create upwards of 10kg (22lbs) of poop per day. For panda conservation centers and zoos, disposing of the immense amount excrement can get expensive. While looking for a way to mitigate the cost of panda’s prolific colons, they took a page from elephant conservatories.Elephants produce as much as 50kg of poop per day, and a lot of it is fibrous plant material. Once their dung undergoes sanitization, the fibers can easily be turned into paper, and then sold. Due to panda poo’s composition being 70% indigestible bamboo remains, it can likewise be made into a variety of products, including toilet and tissue paper. And who wouldn’t want to wipe their own behind (or their nose) with what came out of a cute animals’ butt? Right?
#3 Hippos’ Massive Poop Kills Fish
If you’ve ever seen a hippo poop on land, you’d better keep your distance. Because they wag their tails to spray their poop over 10 meters away. Hippos do this to mark their territory. But as gross as this is to humans, it’s when they poop in the water that causes harm—to fish, at least.
As one of the largest land animals in the world, hippos make a lot of poop. While they graze on land at night, they actually spend a lot of their time in the water during the day to avoid the sun. And they poop in the water, a lot. Scientists studying the hippos in the Mara river on the border of Tanzania and Kenya calculated that the 4,000 strong hippo population poops out about 8,500kg of dung a day into the waters. The waste accumulates on the river’s bottom, and during the dry season, the water fills with toxic chemicals from all the poop. Bacteria eat all those nutrients, but also use oxygen that fish need to breathe. An especially heavy rain can churn up the poop mud on the bottom and send it downstream in a “flushing flow” that suffocates massive amounts of fish.
#4 Wombat waste is square
Odd poop habits, meet odd poop shapes! Wombat’s poop comes out as a perfect square. On average, a wombat will poop 80 to 100 square pellets daily. Why squares? Wombats mostly feed on grass and bark, which means their poop is high in fiber and very dense. This, plus the fact that their intestines have ridges and they have a very slow digestive process, adds up to square poop!
#5 Vultures and storks poop on their feet, purposefully
It’s not uncommon to see turkey vultures pooping on their own feet. While some may be embarrassed at this practice, turkey vultures have a good reason! The poop of a turkey vulture is filled with good bacteria that kills bad bacteria, keeping their feet clean after scavenging on dead animals.
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Video source: Animal Empire
