Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 2: My story about poop is an embarrassing one, and one
Speaker 2: I am comfortable to share, but one that is embarrassing,
Speaker 2: and like a lot of embarrassing stories, it happened when
Speaker 2: I was much younger. I was in fifth grade at
Speaker 2: my first experience of staying away from my parents with
Speaker 2: my school class. It was at an outdoor ed adventure
Speaker 2: in the woods where you do ropes, courses and team
Speaker 2: building exercises and you stay in a cabin. I remember
Speaker 2: being excited for it. I remember having good friends in
Speaker 2: elementary school, and I remember the first day going rather well,
Speaker 2: where we were in the woods, playing outside. The first
Speaker 2: night was a large like sort of cafeteria style lunch
Speaker 2: where we had I don't remember what the food was,
Speaker 2: but I sat with my friends. Everything was rather normal,
Speaker 2: and then we took a long walk to there was
Speaker 2: a planetarium attached to this outdoor ed facility, and we
Speaker 2: were going to see a late night probably like eight
Speaker 2: or nine o'clockanitarium show. And I remember walking with my
Speaker 2: friends talking, and my memory is a little fuzzy at
Speaker 2: this point, possibly for reasons to protect myself, but at
Speaker 2: a certain point during this walk, I think I attempted
Speaker 2: to fart and poop came out, and then poop continued
Speaker 2: to come out, and at a certain point, I don't
Speaker 2: know what happened in my brain, but I was okay
Speaker 2: with continuing to let poop come out because there was
Speaker 2: really nothing I could do. I was committed to going
Speaker 2: to the planetarium. I was committed to seeing this through,
Speaker 2: and I truly didn't know.
Speaker 3: What else to do.
Speaker 2: And I'd already done the poop and I thought it
Speaker 2: was done. So every time a new wave of having
Speaker 2: to go to the bathroom came to me, I let
Speaker 2: it happen. And I remember walking with a lot of
Speaker 2: poop in my pants. My pa were jeans, they were
Speaker 2: like tough denim jeans, and the poop was like I
Speaker 2: would describe it as like toothpasting down my leg. It
Speaker 2: was really horrible, but again I wasn't like super disturbed
Speaker 2: by it. In the moment we went to the planetarium,
Speaker 2: I sat next to my friends. I promise I think
Speaker 2: I continued pooping. I remember people smelling it. I remember
Speaker 2: successfully just saying it wasn't me and saying that I
Speaker 2: smelled it too, And then I remember walking back to
Speaker 2: our cabin immediately going to the shower, taking off my
Speaker 2: pants in the shower, attempting to clean my pants so
Speaker 2: that I could put them in a bag that I
Speaker 2: could take home with myself. I remember that shower being possibly,
Speaker 2: at least up until that point, the greatest shower of
Speaker 2: my entire life. And that is the end of the story.
Speaker 2: I did put myself again the next day. It wasn't
Speaker 2: as obscene or abundant, but it happened again. And I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was nerves, if it was something
Speaker 2: about the diet. But that is my poop story and
Speaker 2: I am not proud of it. I think my life
Speaker 2: would be very different had my friends found out, and
Speaker 2: most of them still don't know. But anyway, that's my story.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for brilliant willing to share that.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Erin Welsh and I'm Erin on an update and
Speaker 1: this is this podcast will kill you.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Poop Poop, Poop, Poop Yeah, Part one.
Speaker 1: I think we decided to do an episode or two
Speaker 1: episodes about poop without really knowing what they were going
Speaker 1: to be about, and we're just like poop that sounds
Speaker 1: like something we would talk about, like it is.
Speaker 3: On on on end, just like continue to talk.
Speaker 1: About yeah, yeah, but we are going to We eventually
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, I guess we'll have to come up
Speaker 1: with topics specific to poop. What do people want to
Speaker 1: know about poop? And yeah, and so here we are.
Speaker 1: Now here we are. So this episode we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about what is in poop, how we make poop,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to go in to a little bit
Speaker 1: of like poop in the Animal Kingdom.
Speaker 3: I am so excited and not just like how animals poop,
Speaker 3: but like all of the ways in which we can
Speaker 3: use poop. Yes, exciting.
Speaker 1: Poop is a resource. Is how I had originally titled this.
Speaker 1: The second episode was just like poop is gross, poop
Speaker 1: is gross. Yeah, So and next week we're going to
Speaker 1: go into yeah, more of poop is gross? And then
Speaker 1: what happens when you can't poop the way that you
Speaker 1: should poop? Talk about it, and I'll talk about like toilets,
Speaker 1: the history of sanitation, just how disgusting ancient Rome really was.
Speaker 3: I cannot tell you how excited I am to hear
Speaker 3: about how disgusting ancient Rome was.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to hear more about fiber and I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you about it. I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 3: that much about parastels.
Speaker 1: I just like the word, just wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 3: We'll say it multiple times.
Speaker 1: Oh, poop quarantine any time we have that, Actually have
Speaker 1: that completely forgot a while since we've like recorded recorded,
Speaker 1: What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 3: We're drinking drink number.
Speaker 1: Two, drink number two.
Speaker 3: Of all the ways that you can say poop, we
Speaker 3: found that one to be the most charming.
Speaker 1: I really do, I really do like it. It's good,
Speaker 1: it's a good one.
Speaker 3: It's also a delicious drink.
Speaker 1: It is what is in poop? Or sorry, what is
Speaker 1: in drink number two? Not poop number two?
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that later. But what's in drink number
Speaker 3: two is basically like a mint chocolate martini situation. So
Speaker 3: there's vodka, there's cremded cacao or something similar to that
Speaker 3: chocolate liqueur Bevermitch knops. You can tell I don't make
Speaker 3: the drinks.
Speaker 1: Some chocolate syrup. You know, it's gonna be all right done.
Speaker 1: We'll post that on social media at least at least
Speaker 1: possibly website if we can get on that.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's been a struggle.
Speaker 1: You know, it's fine.
Speaker 3: You just have to follow us on socials, Yes, please do,
Speaker 3: and then you'll see it there.
Speaker 1: And also on YouTube on YouTube because we're here in
Speaker 1: the exactly right studio we are. It's really fun to
Speaker 1: be here again. And if you would like to experience
Speaker 1: some of that joy with us, please go to YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com the exactly right media channel and you'll find.
Speaker 3: Us and we're there. This whole season has been on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It has been so it's been quite with some occasional
Speaker 1: really fun videos and pictures.
Speaker 3: We have a couple for you today. We do all
Speaker 3: right with some props, with some props also business last
Speaker 3: piece we swear. We're also a website. We do have
Speaker 3: a website.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3: This podcast with kill you dot com. We have a
Speaker 3: lot of things there. You can find all of the
Speaker 3: sources from this episode and all of our episodes. You
Speaker 3: can find links to our bookshop dot org, affiliate account,
Speaker 3: our good Reads list, and merch merch merch. You can
Speaker 3: also find transcripts, YEP and bloodmobile. Who does all of
Speaker 3: our music ye first hand account, first hand account form,
Speaker 3: contact us form. There's a lot there.
Speaker 1: There's lots. Okay, are we finally ready for number two?
Speaker 3: I think so Aaronka, Okay, we'll take a break and
Speaker 3: get started.
Speaker 1: Poop.
Speaker 3: Sorry, every time I say the word poop it makes
Speaker 3: me laughs. I know. Poop is the non digestible parts
Speaker 3: of our food, mixed up with a bunch of digestive juices, mucus,
Speaker 3: left off cells from our gi tract, and of course
Speaker 3: tons of bacteria, both living and dead.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by tons?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'll tell you. Okay, just do you wait? So
Speaker 3: I thought that for the start of this episode and
Speaker 3: this series, really where we're going to be talking so
Speaker 3: much about poop, it feels important and also fun for
Speaker 3: me to go through the process of digestion and learn
Speaker 3: how we make a poop together, How we make a
Speaker 3: poop together, Learn together how we make a poop?
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I prefer that.
Speaker 3: Yes, Miss Frizzle did this on a lovely journey through
Speaker 3: Arthur's digestive tract.
Speaker 1: I still remember this same.
Speaker 3: So we're basically going to take Miss Frizzle's journey through
Speaker 3: our own digestive tract. Along this journey, we might mention
Speaker 3: a lot of places where things could go wrong. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to get stuper into detail on the things
Speaker 3: that could go wrong right now. But if you have questions,
Speaker 3: I know you'll ask them. You know, I know qualms
Speaker 3: about that, no, But mostly I'm going to be talking
Speaker 3: about like the process of digestion, how we make a
Speaker 3: poop so that we know really what is in our poop.
Speaker 3: And the next week is when we'll talk more about
Speaker 3: how things can go wrong with a digestion and poop
Speaker 3: poop manufacturing, Yeah, manufacturing Ltd. So digestion and starts in
Speaker 3: our mouth as soon as we put a bite of
Speaker 3: food into our mouth. We've got amylases and other enzymes
Speaker 3: in our saliva that start the process of breaking down
Speaker 3: the complex starches that's in our food, and of course
Speaker 3: our teeth are grinding and breaking things down into teeny
Speaker 3: tiny pieces. As we swallow that food, matter will pass
Speaker 3: through our esophagus aided by these muscular contractions that you
Speaker 3: love so much that we call peristalsissus, as well as
Speaker 3: aided by all of that saliva that we mixed our
Speaker 3: food up with, and then our esophagus has to travel
Speaker 3: all the way like from our mouth basically down through
Speaker 3: a hole in our diaphragm, which is that muscle that
Speaker 3: separates our chest from our abdomen through a hole in
Speaker 3: that diaphragm, and then through a sphincter called the lower
Speaker 3: esophageal sphincter. Sphincters are a recurring theme.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're attract They are essential.
Speaker 3: Exactly, Yeah, very much so. And our food bowlless, which
Speaker 3: is what it's called at this point, will land with
Speaker 3: a splash I like to imagine in the digestive acids
Speaker 3: of our stomach.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's like a sea of acid.
Speaker 3: A little see it's probably not realistically, but it's the
Speaker 3: way I like to imagine it, okay, okay. And our
Speaker 3: stomach is up in the upper left hand side of
Speaker 3: our belly, got it, okay, And there in our stomach
Speaker 3: it will churn literally with muscular contractions and burn literally
Speaker 3: with hydrochloric acid, as well as other enzymes that our
Speaker 3: stomach makes, like pepsin and other things, to further break
Speaker 3: down our food and create this kind of like liquidy,
Speaker 3: mushy mass that's called chime cime chyme, and our stomach
Speaker 3: then lets that cime out a little bit at a
Speaker 3: time through yet another sphincter called the pyloric sphincter.
Speaker 1: How little at a time do you what do you mean?
Speaker 3: It's a great question. So the amount of time, how
Speaker 3: little it kind of depends on what it is that
Speaker 3: you're eating. So liquids are gonna donut.
Speaker 1: Like we just eight.
Speaker 3: It usually takes half of our food will be emptied
Speaker 3: from our stomach in about an hour or so, wow, okay,
Speaker 3: and then the rest of it. It can really just
Speaker 3: depend on how much fat was in it, how well
Speaker 3: we chewed it, because bigger pieces that are larger than
Speaker 3: like two millimeters cannot pass through that sphincter, so they
Speaker 3: have to be broken down further before they can pass through.
Speaker 3: And all of that just happens in our in our stomach.
Speaker 3: So it's doing all of that, but usually between two
Speaker 3: and four hours, your stomach is completely empty after a
Speaker 3: meal two.
Speaker 1: And four hours. And fat, more fat means longer time digestive.
Speaker 3: Exactly, yes, because it kind of sits on top because
Speaker 3: it floats, and so then it like whatever takes longer
Speaker 3: for it to kind of end up passing through that sphincter.
Speaker 3: And in that way, our stomach is a really important
Speaker 3: regulator of our digestion, right because it is slowly letting
Speaker 3: food or cime rather out of our stomach into our
Speaker 3: small intestine at a rate ideally that our small intestine
Speaker 3: can actually handle it. If it just dumped all of
Speaker 3: the contents at once, that would be miserable and you
Speaker 3: would feel really sick from it because you're small intestine.
Speaker 3: And I feel like really doesn't get enough credit in
Speaker 3: RGI track.
Speaker 1: It's so huge, it's huge. It's it's not aptly named. No,
Speaker 1: it is the long intestine.
Speaker 3: It is the long intestine. It is small in diameter,
Speaker 3: and that's why it's called the small intestine. But yes,
Speaker 3: it is also the place where we are doing all
Speaker 3: almost of the absorption of our nutrients. Like you could
Speaker 3: take out someone's entire stomach, you could take out someone's
Speaker 3: entire colon. You really cannot take out their whole small intestine.
Speaker 1: But you can take up like chunks of it.
Speaker 3: Even taking out small trunks of it can have pretty
Speaker 3: significant effects and ends up with what we called short
Speaker 3: gut syndrome, which can have quite a lot of side effects.
Speaker 3: So anyways, I just really like small intestin doesn't get
Speaker 3: enough cred.
Speaker 1: How long is the small intestine?
Speaker 3: Great question? Anywhere from let me check my notes, because
Speaker 3: that's later three to five meters, which is like nine
Speaker 3: to sixteen plus feet.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just all coiled up in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I want everyone to know that I tried really
Speaker 3: hard to make like a large diagram.
Speaker 1: Did you make it to scale like you were going
Speaker 1: to have like nine It was like the size of
Speaker 1: my child. Okay, well your child's not nine feet.
Speaker 3: No no, no, well neither are we.
Speaker 1: But it was coiled yeah. Oh oh, I see.
Speaker 3: I just meant yeah anyways, but I didn't, so I
Speaker 3: have no visuals right now except my hands. Okay, where
Speaker 3: are we, Aaron? We've gotten way off course.
Speaker 1: We started giving credit to the small intestine.
Speaker 3: So that's where all of our food that our stomach
Speaker 3: lets out makes it. And in addition to all of
Speaker 3: the absorption which is happening in our small intestine, our
Speaker 3: small intestine is also a place of continued digestion. So
Speaker 3: our gallbladder, which everyone is an expert on now because
Speaker 3: we did an episode on gall batter as well as
Speaker 3: our pancreas, are both secreting additional digestive enzymes into our
Speaker 3: small intestine. They let them out in the first part
Speaker 3: of our small intestine, and that like finalizes the process
Speaker 3: of digestion essentially.
Speaker 1: For the most part, so things are digested.
Speaker 3: So things are all the way broken down because they
Speaker 3: have to be broken down all the way into like
Speaker 3: their singular components. Right. All of our starches and carbohydrates
Speaker 3: from things like bread have to be broken down into
Speaker 3: single sugars. Our proteins have to be broken down into
Speaker 3: single amino acids. Fats have to be broken down into
Speaker 3: fatty acids so that in our small intestine they can
Speaker 3: be absorbed through that intestinal wall and into our bloodstream
Speaker 3: so that we can actually use these things.
Speaker 1: So it's like digestion, extraction, excretion, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, except the colon does more than excretion and we'll
Speaker 3: get there just one second. So yeah, So that's our
Speaker 3: small intestine and what it's doing the whole way down.
Speaker 3: There's like three different parts that have different names, and
Speaker 3: each of them absorb different things. Don't ask me any specifics.
Speaker 3: Most all of everything is absorbed within the first two
Speaker 3: thirds are duodenum and ju juna, the first parts of
Speaker 3: our small intestine, and then the last part is called
Speaker 3: the ilium. And there, even though most things have been
Speaker 3: absorbed by then a few things are very important to
Speaker 3: be absorbed only in that spot, like B twelve as
Speaker 3: well as our bio salts throwback to our salt better episode.
Speaker 3: Interesting why it's so specialized. Each part of our system
Speaker 3: has a purpose. And then at the end of this
Speaker 3: sixteen ish feet journey, there's yet another sphincter, the iliosecual valve.
Speaker 1: Okay, I just have to say that all of my
Speaker 1: all of my favorite words apparently are digestive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sphincter, peristosis, du yeah.
Speaker 1: Not sphincter. It was the ill sekul il, I mean sphincter. Fine,
Speaker 1: I love like spin. I would put it up there,
Speaker 1: but not like it's not it's nowhere near duodenum.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's a good yeah, yeah, these are good words.
Speaker 3: So at this iliosecal valves is what separates the small
Speaker 3: intestine from our large intestine, which is also called our
Speaker 3: colon and our colon. It kind of is the star
Speaker 3: of the show when it comes to poop, because this
Speaker 3: is where this mushy mass of chime and digested food
Speaker 3: bits that are left over turns into poop. This happens
Speaker 3: in our colony. Our colon starts down in the right
Speaker 3: lower right quadrant of our abdomen. It snakes up that's
Speaker 3: called our acending colon. Oh yes, towards our lever. It
Speaker 3: goes across the top of our belly, and then it
Speaker 3: travels down to our lower left quadrant, and then it
Speaker 3: does a s curve okay, like colon down and back
Speaker 3: to our rectum okay, and then it exits our anus.
Speaker 1: Yet another sphincter, two sphincters exactly what.
Speaker 3: Yes, The large intestine is called the large intestine because
Speaker 3: it's much wider than our small intestine, So it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like five to eight send me instead of two
Speaker 3: to four centimeters, but it's not nearly as long. It's
Speaker 3: like five feet ish one hundred and fifty centimeters or
Speaker 3: so long a meter and a half. And the way
Speaker 3: that we go from this pure liquid cime that's rushing
Speaker 3: through the water side of our small intestine and into
Speaker 3: the formed tubes that we think of as turds is
Speaker 3: because our colon is absorbing all of the water that
Speaker 3: is left over. Right, our small intestine does a crap
Speaker 3: ton of water absorption as well, but our colon that
Speaker 3: is the primary function of it. It's reasorbing water and electrolytes,
Speaker 3: especially sodium, because the water follows the sodium, and that
Speaker 3: is like its main job. It's absorbing like one to
Speaker 3: two liters of water per day. It also has a
Speaker 3: ton of musculature around it, and so it is doing
Speaker 3: peristalsis to really mix all of those contents to make
Speaker 3: sure that any other things that didn't get absorbed, things
Speaker 3: that need further breakdown by the microbes that live in
Speaker 3: our colon, which do a really important role in breaking
Speaker 3: down the last bits of things.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming that the our microbio our gut microbiome
Speaker 1: is very different from one start of the small intestine
Speaker 1: all the way to the end.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, every aspect of our gi tract has its
Speaker 3: own microflora. Love that, yes, but yeah that. And then
Speaker 3: at the end of that, at the very bottom of
Speaker 3: this gastro intestinal tract, the last pieces, the rectum and
Speaker 3: the anus, are really really important. Now, the anal canal,
Speaker 3: it's only a couple of inches long, super short, but
Speaker 3: it has in that two different sphincters. There's the internal
Speaker 3: sphincter and the external sphincter. Now, the internal anal sphincter
Speaker 3: is not really under voluntary control, so that's automatically opening
Speaker 3: and closing. And it does this when your rectum starts
Speaker 3: to fill with poop. Listen, we're going there, We're there.
Speaker 3: It's we're deep in it. As your rectum starts to
Speaker 3: fill with poop, this causes your internal anal sphincter to relax,
Speaker 3: to let a little bit of the contents of that
Speaker 3: rectum into the anal canal. Okay, okay. Then there's sensors there.
Speaker 3: There's like a system where it talks back to your
Speaker 3: brain through the sensory system in your anal canal that
Speaker 3: can tell is it a pooper? Is it a part?
Speaker 1: But they can't. I mean, it can't always always account.
Speaker 3: But you sometimes can. And so then you go and
Speaker 3: have control over that external anal sphincter so that if
Speaker 3: it senses poop and you're in a place where you
Speaker 3: can let it out, then you relax that external anal
Speaker 3: sphincter and letter poo. Or you sense that there's poop
Speaker 3: and you're like, I'm not there yet, and so you
Speaker 3: can clench that external anal sphincter, which everyone's probably doing
Speaker 3: right now as they listen, or you can sense that
Speaker 3: it's a fart and you're like, now's the time.
Speaker 1: Now's the time.
Speaker 3: Release okay, and hope you're right and hope that you're
Speaker 3: right about it. And that is how we make.
Speaker 1: Poop amazing, isn't it.
Speaker 3: I just really feel like that journey deserves credit.
Speaker 1: So there's more parastals. The large intestine or the colon
Speaker 1: is the star when it comes to parastlsis.
Speaker 3: Everything is parisalicing because you need it to be able
Speaker 3: for your food to even make it to your stomach
Speaker 3: to begin with, your stomach has a lot of musculature
Speaker 3: and it's also contracting, but your colon just has like
Speaker 3: a different setup of muscles where they have these like
Speaker 3: transverse muscles that run along the whole colon as well
Speaker 3: as around, so they just do a little different types
Speaker 3: of contraction to really form those turds.
Speaker 1: I really want to ask questions about like what when
Speaker 1: does your stomach hurt? What is actually hurting? But I
Speaker 1: know that that's probably more next week and it's so variable.
Speaker 3: But yes, we'll talk where about that next week when
Speaker 3: you have where does that happen? Oh? Do you mean
Speaker 3: bor barrigmy?
Speaker 1: What there's a word for that? And get another really
Speaker 1: good world.
Speaker 3: I know it's really good. Wow, bor Berrigmy is the
Speaker 3: tummy gurgs that you get? The gas bubbles?
Speaker 1: Okay? Why does it have a name because it's so good?
Speaker 1: Where does that come from?
Speaker 3: I have no clue.
Speaker 1: Is it a person?
Speaker 3: These are questions for you.
Speaker 1: No, I know, I literally in that one of the episodes,
Speaker 1: I have a whole thing on etymology.
Speaker 3: It might be is it this one?
Speaker 1: I think it is this one? It is?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well I don't have answers for those questions, but
Speaker 3: I do want to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 3: the poop that that we have now formed. You asked
Speaker 3: at the beginning, like how long does it take for
Speaker 3: us to just empty that stomach? And so that's you
Speaker 3: know again anywhere from like one to four hours. But
Speaker 3: this whole process of forming a turd can take such
Speaker 3: a long time. It's anywhere from like twenty four to
Speaker 3: seventy two hours. We're talking like one to three days,
Speaker 3: or if.
Speaker 1: It's gum, it's five years.
Speaker 3: That was way too big of a laugh for that, Sorry,
Speaker 3: but I thought it was quite funny. Yeah no, uh yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's it's hugely variable, which I think is so
Speaker 3: fascinating because it's not just that it varies person to person,
Speaker 3: which it does, but it can also vary depending on
Speaker 3: what you're eating. So fiber, I was just about to say,
Speaker 3: which we'll talk more about next week. Okay, fiber can
Speaker 3: significantly increase transit times, meaning that things move quicker through
Speaker 3: your colon and through your small intestine as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, increase transit times as in like faster, faster moved through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, less traffic Okay, okay, But anyway, the main
Speaker 3: timeframe is like between one to three days.
Speaker 1: One to three days, And what about other things that
Speaker 1: change transit time.
Speaker 3: Fiber is the biggest one that has been studied, but
Speaker 3: there's also like there's lots of medications that can slow
Speaker 3: down transit, big huge glp ones that everyone is on
Speaker 3: right now, the like ozembics of the world. That's like
Speaker 3: one of their main mechanisms is slowing down gastric emptying
Speaker 3: and so they slow your transit time. But lots of
Speaker 3: other medicines can too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Why do like opioids slow down transit time?
Speaker 3: I think because of something about the receptors that they're
Speaker 3: working on, where there's also opioid receptors in your GI tract,
Speaker 3: but yeah, they can cause pretty substantial constipation. The SSRIs
Speaker 3: also can affect your gut motility in general, not necessarily
Speaker 3: slowing it down, but sometimes sometimes spinning it up, but
Speaker 3: just cause more worried me, just more movement there because
Speaker 3: of how much serotonin we have in our guts. So
Speaker 3: there's a lot of different medicines that can do that.
Speaker 3: And there's also, in addition to a range in like
Speaker 3: how long it takes you to make your poop, which
Speaker 3: might affect how often you poop, there's also a huge
Speaker 3: range in consistency of poops. And for that we can
Speaker 3: talk about one of my favorite things in all of
Speaker 3: medicine to talk about, which is the Bristol stool scale
Speaker 3: or the Bristol formed stool scale. And I think we
Speaker 3: have an image of it, but you can google it
Speaker 3: if you're just listening. It's called the Bristol stool chart.
Speaker 3: And this was invented in nineteen ninety, yeah.
Speaker 1: Which feels like it should have been invented in much
Speaker 1: year ago, ten.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, But it wasn't. It was within our lifetimes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And they actually invented this or they came up with
Speaker 3: this really as a way to correlate stool transit time.
Speaker 3: So it was like the longer that your stool was
Speaker 3: taking to move through your guts, the harder your poops
Speaker 3: were going to be. So a type one stool are
Speaker 3: described as separate hard lumps like nuts. So like you're
Speaker 3: popping out pellets, rabbit pellets. Oh, like these rabbit pellets
Speaker 3: rabbit pellet, which I have a shout out to the
Speaker 3: San Diego Natural History Museum for letting me borrow their
Speaker 3: poop there.
Speaker 1: It's not real poop, just in case anyone is concerned
Speaker 1: that it's.
Speaker 3: Really accurate fakeo. So yeah, like hard hard rabbit pellets
Speaker 3: is like a type one, and then a type seven
Speaker 3: is just like pure liquid poop, just completely watery, no
Speaker 3: pieces type of poop and deal poop is considered usually
Speaker 3: between three and four and sometimes the type five.
Speaker 1: So sometimes is that just like depending on.
Speaker 3: The person dependence really like what is normal for you
Speaker 3: might be different than what's normal for someone else.
Speaker 1: That's interesting in and of itself.
Speaker 3: I know, right.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And also this is a slightly different scale for kiddos
Speaker 3: who are very prone to constipation, but their scale is
Speaker 3: a little bit different. Just to make it easier for
Speaker 3: kids because they have a harder time describing their poop.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, why why do kids have Is it just
Speaker 1: they're not eating fiber.
Speaker 3: I think it's more that they hold their poop, especially
Speaker 3: in toddlers, like they'll be like volitional stool holding, it's called,
Speaker 3: and so they basically are like either afraid to poop
Speaker 3: in the potty or it's like too big of a
Speaker 3: change for them, or they have one bad poop and
Speaker 3: now they're scared of it. There's like so many things.
Speaker 1: That during the potty training.
Speaker 3: But then once constant We'll talk more about this next week.
Speaker 3: But once constipation starts, it's really hard, like it's a
Speaker 3: it's a vicious cycle. Oh yeah, it's a heart it's
Speaker 3: a hard Okay, break, I want to ask questions I
Speaker 3: know next week, but that I mean, that's like how
Speaker 3: we make poop. These are the ways that our poop
Speaker 3: can look really varied. I don't know what other questions
Speaker 3: that you have about poop.
Speaker 1: Fiber. Talk to me about fiber and yeah, no, excuse me.
Speaker 3: What do you want to know? I'm gonna talk more
Speaker 3: next week about fiber. Okay, Okay, what fiber does on
Speaker 3: like a general level is it holds onto water.
Speaker 1: It holds onto water.
Speaker 3: So fiber are parts of plant material that we cannot
Speaker 3: break down ourselves. Some parts of fiber, our gut bacteria
Speaker 3: can break down, and they do so, and when they
Speaker 3: do then they usually produce gas. And so that's why
Speaker 3: sometimes fiber can make you real bloated and gassy because
Speaker 3: your gut bacteria are so thrilled about it. But other
Speaker 3: times they don't really break it down. And then all
Speaker 3: it is is this basically like large structure that holds
Speaker 3: onto water. And so because your colon is mostly just
Speaker 3: absorbing water, the more fiber that you have, the less
Speaker 3: water that you're absorbing from that, so the softer your
Speaker 3: stool stays. It also provides this like bulking agent, which
Speaker 3: then your colon can peristals against and that is why
Speaker 3: it moves along as well too. Okay, so that's basically fiber.
Speaker 1: I do have a question I was thinking, So, okay,
Speaker 1: so you talked about that the poop is our undigested
Speaker 1: or well okay, the.
Speaker 3: Leftover fliptovers, Yeah, leftovers.
Speaker 1: And then it's also bacteria and some of our own
Speaker 1: gut microbes. How much of it is gut microbes, what
Speaker 1: about our intestinal shedding? You know what? Tell me?
Speaker 3: So glad you asked, that's the last thing I wanted
Speaker 3: to tell you, Like we work so well together. So
Speaker 3: because that gets into like, okay, I said that it's
Speaker 3: just the leftover parts, and now we know what our
Speaker 3: guts are doing the whole way down. But like, what
Speaker 3: really is our poop made out of? What is the
Speaker 3: a turd in the toilet? What is it really?
Speaker 1: Well on the stool scale, on some stale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, seventy five percent of our poop is just water,
Speaker 3: seventy five percent on average if we're talking like a
Speaker 3: Bristol three to five. Sure, Okay, the less the more constipated,
Speaker 3: the harder the stool, the less water it's going to have.
Speaker 3: But so seventy five percent or so of it is
Speaker 3: usually water and the remaining twenty five percent is like biomass.
Speaker 3: Up to fifty five percent of that biomass is bacteria. Wow,
Speaker 3: and up to fifty percent of that bacteria are still alive.
Speaker 3: Of those bacteria, Sorry for my grammar. So we're talking
Speaker 3: like I also didn't even mention this, but like in
Speaker 3: your in your colon, especially because that's where we think
Speaker 3: about our gut microbiome the most because that's where we
Speaker 3: have the most abundant flora, even though we have microbes everywhere. Sure,
Speaker 3: we are talking hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of
Speaker 3: individual bacteria from hundreds, if not thousands of different species,
Speaker 3: all of which are doing different things. They're serving different roles,
Speaker 3: including helping break down the final bits of food that
Speaker 3: weren't broken down by our digestive tract in our small
Speaker 3: intestine and our stomach, including making vitamin K and a
Speaker 3: number of B vitamins that are essential for us to
Speaker 3: then absorb in our colon, and playing a huge role
Speaker 3: in our immune system protecting us from infection with other bacteria,
Speaker 3: and then also just like modulating our immune response. And
Speaker 3: the more that we learn about our gut microbiome, the
Speaker 3: more of a role that we know that it has
Speaker 3: in like our total body health. So when we're pooping out,
Speaker 3: like half of the actual mass of our poop is
Speaker 3: just bacteria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is also you can't get over that, And.
Speaker 3: It's also why our poop is so gross, because half
Speaker 3: of that bacteria is alive and could make you sick
Speaker 3: if it was the right type of bacteria or if
Speaker 3: it was opportunistic and I can't wait for you to
Speaker 3: tell us more about that. And then the rest of
Speaker 3: it is fiber insoluble plant matter, undigestive sugars, undigested protein,
Speaker 3: whatever other stuff, and then some cells in mucus. The
Speaker 3: rest of that fifty percent, and the breakdown depends on
Speaker 3: what you're eating. But Aaron, unless you have any other questions,
Speaker 3: I'm going to transition to you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean, I just okay, So there's so much
Speaker 1: back to I just didn't that's incredible.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: Oh, I do have a question about just like water
Speaker 1: in general. So you know, obviously we're drinking a lot
Speaker 1: of water. How does dehydration play a role in poop formation?
Speaker 3: Huge role, especially in constipation. So, like the biggest, one
Speaker 3: of the biggest risks with diarrhea is that your colon
Speaker 3: is not absorbing that water, and so you're at really
Speaker 3: high risk of dehydration because now you're losing one to
Speaker 3: two liters of water or more depending on how much
Speaker 3: you're pooping. And so that's a huge risk of diarrhea.
Speaker 3: And so if you are dehydrated, your colon is still
Speaker 3: going to absorb ninety percent or more of the water
Speaker 3: that is left in or colon. But if you are
Speaker 3: dehydrated to begin with, then you're not drinking as much water.
Speaker 3: There's not as much water making it there, and so
Speaker 3: that's why you're at risk of constipation. Got it? Yep?
Speaker 3: My second episode is now also done. Just kidding, So
Speaker 3: I'm going to just end this by saying, if we
Speaker 3: think back again to what our poop is made out of, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: it's bacteria, it's plant matter, it's fats and proteins. If
Speaker 3: you go even more nitty gritty on it, our poop
Speaker 3: is hydrogen and oxygen, sure water, carbon, nitrogen, especially from
Speaker 3: the bacteria, and undigestive protein. And then there's some amount
Speaker 3: of inorganic matter that we haven't used or that came
Speaker 3: from these cells, like iron and calcium and phosphate. There's salts.
Speaker 3: So really, aerin poop is just the building blocks of life.
Speaker 1: Uh duh.
Speaker 3: So tell me about how animals use it?
Speaker 1: Oh, I can't wait, I cannot wait.
Speaker 4: Okay, we have.
Speaker 1: So many names for poop, so many names. There's excrement,
Speaker 1: which comes from the Latin to separate or sift out.
Speaker 1: H turd I loved it comes from similar meanings which
Speaker 1: I find interesting to split flay, torn off the body.
Speaker 1: Crap originates from the word for residue, specifically from rendered fat.
Speaker 3: I love the word crap.
Speaker 1: I do too. I think turd is still but like
Speaker 1: crap is more versatile, right like a crap.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can my two year old saying, and it
Speaker 3: just cracks me up.
Speaker 1: There's fee sees, which is from the Latin for sediment
Speaker 1: or dregs. Stool. I don't need to take us on
Speaker 1: that animalogical journey. It's it's longer, but it basically is
Speaker 1: like thrown as part of it, which I find fast,
Speaker 1: like like thrown like toilet. Yeah, it's like, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll take I'll take us on this journey. It starts
Speaker 1: as seat for one person, as in like thrown, and
Speaker 1: then to the other stool that we think of today,
Speaker 1: you know, like the just a stool, like the little
Speaker 1: stool to then privy to then poop. Huh yeah, interesting,
Speaker 1: dung all manure.
Speaker 3: Poop.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know where poop comes from? It
Speaker 1: comes from the okay, does not come from poop deck,
Speaker 1: which I think is a comics swabbing the deck. Those
Speaker 1: are not the same, not the same etymological origin. I
Speaker 1: think so poop probably comes from the Middle English word
Speaker 1: poopen poopin referring to the sound a horn makes, which
Speaker 1: then became fart fart, and then through automatopoeia became poop poop,
Speaker 1: and and then there are so many words that we
Speaker 1: use to describe animal poop droppings, scat which means any
Speaker 1: wild animal poop, guano, bat and bird poop. So much Yep,
Speaker 1: bring out the guano.
Speaker 3: This is some bat guano. Again, thank you to the
Speaker 3: San Diego Natural Museum. We've got some carnivor poop.
Speaker 1: Carnivor poop.
Speaker 3: Look at that. It's so gross it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, that's carnivor poop. There's frass, which is like
Speaker 1: inside was Yeah, yep, sprint. Oh, I haven't heard that
Speaker 1: otter poop specifically.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I don't have an example of.
Speaker 1: I I just was like, wait, so then I was
Speaker 1: like exactly, so, I don't know. I tried to look
Speaker 1: up others, like species specific names for poop, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't really find very many. I didn't do a huge search.
Speaker 1: I mean, just cubic poop. That's all really I know
Speaker 1: about that. I don't think that's that's not that's not
Speaker 1: the name. But perhaps the most versatile word for poop
Speaker 1: is shi t.
Speaker 3: I have a non explicit rating us so we're not
Speaker 3: going to say, we're not going to say it.
Speaker 1: But like I do love so it shares a similar
Speaker 1: kind of etymological origin as excrement and turd. It comes
Speaker 1: from this idea of separation from the body, which also
Speaker 1: means it shares an origin with the word science. Really
Speaker 1: need to like separate one thing from another.
Speaker 3: Huh, so that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: And science have the same well not poop. Excrement and
Speaker 1: science have the same origin. Ish actually shi t but anyway,
Speaker 1: so but like, yeah, sahi t has so many different
Speaker 1: We can attach that word to like shoot the bull,
Speaker 1: you know, chicken, whatever, I love it, I blank my pants,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But there is no shortage of
Speaker 1: the ways to refer to the gut derived waste that
Speaker 1: we leave behind. But none of these words properly convey
Speaker 1: the respect and a preciation that poop truly deserves, even
Speaker 1: the word waste, which is one of our more like,
Speaker 1: you know, polite words for poop means something of no use,
Speaker 1: something you don't want, something that you like, You're like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't need this, get it away from me. Can
Speaker 1: that be said for poop? I mean, as a species,
Speaker 1: we have devised massive, intricate sewer systems, true feats of
Speaker 1: engineering to increase the distance between us and poop feces.
Speaker 1: Poop elicits a feeling of disgust universally across all cultures,
Speaker 1: probably evolutionarily ingrained because avoidance of feces would also help
Speaker 1: to avoid diseased. So yes, not wanting to be around
Speaker 1: poop is reasonable, it's adaptive. But labeling it as waste
Speaker 1: really only tells one part of the story. Poop as
Speaker 1: a problem to deal with, And that's the story that
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell more of next week. But this
Speaker 1: week my goal is to shine a more appreciative light
Speaker 1: on this dark matter.
Speaker 3: Dark matter, that's another good one.
Speaker 1: There's a book I stole that from that it's called
Speaker 1: The Other Dark Matter. But because without poop, and especially
Speaker 1: the creatures that repurpose it, our planet would be a
Speaker 1: vastly different place, a lifeless empty shell. So we have
Speaker 1: a lot to thank poop for. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: we had a parasite appreciation Hour at one point this
Speaker 1: is the poop appreciation Hour.
Speaker 3: Oh I love it. I'm here for it. Yes, let's
Speaker 3: appreciate some poop.
Speaker 1: Let's appreciate it. Okay, here we go. When I started
Speaker 1: traveling to Panama to do field work for my PhD,
Speaker 1: I picked up the book Tropical Nature by Adrian Forsyth
Speaker 1: and Ken Miata, And by now I've forgotten most of
Speaker 1: what I learned in that book, but there was one
Speaker 1: piece of advice that has stuck with me. If you
Speaker 1: want to see the forest come to life, watch what
Speaker 1: happens after you poop in the woods. Okay, I'm reading
Speaker 1: a quote from this quote. After nature calls, do not
Speaker 1: beat a hasty, embarrassed treat, but sit quietly nearby. The
Speaker 1: earliest contestants will arrive soon after you settle down. First
Speaker 1: are the tiny dung scareb beetles and metallic otitted flies.
Speaker 1: The later arrivals are larger and behaviorally more complex scaub beetles.
Speaker 1: Upon landing, they embark on a series of maneuvers designed
Speaker 1: to secure a private cache of food that they will
Speaker 1: either eat themselves or barter for copulatory rites. While the
Speaker 1: scarabs are carting away dung, long sleek stapho linid beetles
Speaker 1: arrive on the scene. Agile and voracious. They burrow under
Speaker 1: the dung mass in search of their prey. Of all
Speaker 1: the dung deposited in tropical rainforest, human scat is the
Speaker 1: most avidly sought and the most quickly removed. More than
Speaker 1: fifty species of dung scabs may converge on a pile
Speaker 1: of our manure before it is gone species.
Speaker 3: I don't even think I knew there were that many
Speaker 3: species of dung beetles.
Speaker 1: Oh there are, do I have it. We'll see lots, lots,
Speaker 1: many more than fifty species. Isn't that great?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love that. So anyway, that is the piece of
Speaker 1: advice that I will also say, do this, do this.
Speaker 3: Do poop in those woods, Do poop in the woods,
Speaker 3: poop in the woods in the tropics specifically, Like, does
Speaker 3: it have to be tropics?
Speaker 1: No, there are poop. There are dung beetles on every
Speaker 1: continent except Antarctica.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they I mean, they really are the unsung heroes
Speaker 1: of poop. I mean, in fact, all heroes of poop,
Speaker 1: including like the microbes and the fungi and the and
Speaker 1: they're so cute. They're all unsung, right, because no one
Speaker 1: really appreciates no. Dung beetles. They do the environment, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because without them, we would be buried in the stuff.
Speaker 1: Because they take our waste product and they use it
Speaker 1: themselves or they turn it into something that other organisms
Speaker 1: like plants can use. Case in point Australia in the
Speaker 1: years following European colonization. Dung beetles are globally distributed, like
Speaker 1: I said, every continent except Antarctica, but they can be
Speaker 1: pretty picky about the poop that they utilize. When cattle
Speaker 1: were introduced to Australia by Europeans, the dung beetles there,
Speaker 1: which had evolved on a diet of marsupial poop, primarily
Speaker 1: were not interested in this new cattle dung, and the
Speaker 1: poop began to accumulate at a rate that approached thirty
Speaker 1: three million tons per year just mounds.
Speaker 3: It's like so much poop that you can't I can imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll talk a little bit about more other poop
Speaker 1: quantities that there's better visualizations, but this one, I don't
Speaker 1: have a good one for huge, huge, huge pest fly
Speaker 1: populations grew out of control and grazing land shrink because
Speaker 1: the cattle were like, I'm not going to graze near
Speaker 1: these towering piles of maneuver. That's grosss Yeah, And after
Speaker 1: about one hundred and eighty years of this, the government
Speaker 1: decided that they just couldn't take it anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like when the first cows were important. Okay, but
Speaker 1: still yeah, the first fleet. Yeah, so between between nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight and nineteen eighty two, in a move that
Speaker 1: I find shocking considering the issues that introduced species have
Speaker 1: caused in the past. Guess what Australia did.
Speaker 3: Introduce some dung beetles.
Speaker 1: They did fifty five different species of dung beetles, primarily
Speaker 1: from Southern Africa. I know, risky whisky.
Speaker 3: But it paid off.
Speaker 1: It paid off. About eight species took hold and since
Speaker 1: have been relatively successful in restoring some of the Australian pasture.
Speaker 3: It's that's so interesting. Have we ever done an episode
Speaker 3: that's just focused on the introduced species issues. We haven't.
Speaker 3: It's very outside of our and yet inside of our
Speaker 3: personal interest.
Speaker 1: We should do that. Let's do fire ants. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, done, done, But these dung beetles, I mean,
Speaker 1: it just showed how integral they are in the poop cycle,
Speaker 1: and what valueabill work they perform. So for about fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the Earth's ice free surface is used for agriculture,
Speaker 1: and that translates into a lot of livestock dung, much
Speaker 1: of which is handled by dung beetles and other decomposers.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, that's that's like, it's twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. But you know it's fine. Dung Beetle contributions
Speaker 1: to the US beef cattle industry alone were estimated at
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty million dollars per year.
Speaker 3: And no one's paying them.
Speaker 1: No one's paying them. They're getting paid in poopt, paid
Speaker 1: and poop and they're happy about that.
Speaker 3: They're through.
Speaker 1: Yeah. By reintegrating dung into the landscape, dung beetles are
Speaker 1: helping to fertilize the soil cycle. Nutrients distribute seeds both
Speaker 1: reduce and distribute parasites, which have a role in ecosystems
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: We still appreciate parents.
Speaker 1: I love parasites. They control pest fly populations. Some are
Speaker 1: even pollinators. Yeah, I don't know how, so don't ask.
Speaker 3: That's fine.
Speaker 1: For the past forty million years, dung beetles have been
Speaker 1: bringing new meaning to the phrase one man's trash is
Speaker 1: another's treasure.
Speaker 3: God, I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, over five thousand species there it is, I do
Speaker 1: have it. Five thousand species, five thousand species. I mean
Speaker 1: it makes sense though, because like think about niche differentiation.
Speaker 3: Like no, but just of dung beetles. Dung beetles, Oh,
Speaker 3: insects are so cool, I know, okay.
Speaker 1: We are, oh speaking of if you are watching on YouTube,
Speaker 1: we have these sweet dung beetle shirts.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Yu see Davis and entomology.
Speaker 1: And there are very There are other cute shirts that
Speaker 1: we saw there too, but we just had to have these.
Speaker 3: Dog thank you for selling them.
Speaker 1: Yes, but yeah. Among dung beetles, there are rollers that
Speaker 1: transport balls of dung to later bury under the soil.
Speaker 1: There are tunnelers which bury the dung close to where
Speaker 1: it fell. There are dwellers which live in the poop
Speaker 1: or brewed. They're young in the poop mm hmm. And
Speaker 1: dung beetles are not innovators, right like they didn't inherit
Speaker 1: a planet that was piled high with poop. They are
Speaker 1: carrying on a tradition that is foundational to life as
Speaker 1: we know it, whereby quote unquote, waste is in the
Speaker 1: eye of the beholder. For the earliest microbes, oxygen was
Speaker 1: thought it was waste, right, it was a toxic byproduct.
Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide was king and then came along the aerobic bacteria,
Speaker 1: for whom oxygen was not just like weight. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just not waste, but it was essential essential.
Speaker 3: Deep.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like as deep as we're going to go,
Speaker 1: just a little bit of a dive in the backup
Speaker 1: of it. But what one organism produces as waste, another
Speaker 1: views as an opportunity. For us, we may view the
Speaker 1: poop that we produce as waste and nothing more, like
Speaker 1: get this away from me. It stinks, it's gross, it's
Speaker 1: gonna make me sick. But for dung beetles and flies
Speaker 1: and earthworms and soil microbes and fungi, our poop is
Speaker 1: a rich substance packed full of nutrients. It's a place
Speaker 1: to raise your young, to make your mark, and to
Speaker 1: do your part to reuse and recycle.
Speaker 3: I love imagining them like telling their kids this, like, okay, kids,
Speaker 3: get right on the family biz. One kid is like dad,
Speaker 3: can we just eat like broccoli.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we really don't give these organisms, these king
Speaker 1: midases of the world, enough credit for transforming our waste
Speaker 1: into a pile of gold. That waste comes in all
Speaker 1: shapes and sizes. From the cube shaped poop of a wombat,
Speaker 1: which is something to do, is just the way that.
Speaker 3: It they're colon, Yeah.
Speaker 1: To the kidney shaped dung of a horse, the pellets
Speaker 1: of rabbits.
Speaker 3: I did not know that horse poop is shaped like
Speaker 3: a kidney, like.
Speaker 1: A bean beanish, yeah, beanie, yeah, to the cylindrical tubes
Speaker 1: of carnivores and us and us and omnivores. Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if all omnivores have cylindrical poop.
Speaker 1: There are generalizations that we can make, and there are
Speaker 1: exceptions to everything.
Speaker 3: There's probably a bristol stool scale for every animal.
Speaker 1: Just kidding well, I was actually thinking that they probably should,
Speaker 1: right like there would be because a sick rabbit probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't produce my dog's poop ranges, Oh god, in texture,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, how am I supposed to get this
Speaker 1: off in the grass?
Speaker 3: It is just embedded in especially the second or third
Speaker 3: poop of the walk.
Speaker 1: It's just like you know, when it's a third poop
Speaker 1: and you're just like, please, don't, just please, there's nothing
Speaker 1: at least, yeah, you can wipe it. On second thought,
Speaker 1: I'm glad we don't have more pictures for this episode thing.
Speaker 1: But the variation in poop across the animal kingdom is
Speaker 1: so vast that you might wonder if there are any
Speaker 1: real common threads, And it turns out that there are so.
Speaker 1: By modeling how different species pooped, some researchers conclude that
Speaker 1: the magic number for poop duration.
Speaker 3: Is twelve seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I found this paper, Aaron, and I told my whole
Speaker 3: family about it, and now my kid counts every time
Speaker 3: he goes to the bath and me. He's like yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, it's been more than twelve seconds, bro,
Speaker 3: I've been coming.
Speaker 1: My dog and I'm like seven, are you okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was twelve plus or minus seven seconds.
Speaker 1: That was the twelve plus or minus seven second I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: that's still like quite a small range just in terms
Speaker 1: of yeah, because it was like from elephants to rabbits
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, give it to me.
Speaker 1: So like, okay, elephants poop fifteen pounds a day fifteen
Speaker 1: pounds pounds, yeah, oh my gosh, which is one hundred
Speaker 1: times more than a dog poops.
Speaker 3: Hm. Wow.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Elephants poop at a rate of three inches per second,
Speaker 1: keep going. Dog poop at about a rate ofo point
Speaker 1: five inches per second.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's a much smaller volume, smaller but same rate,
Speaker 3: same and humans are like just under an inch a second.
Speaker 1: Although, so are humans actually pooping twelve seconds? Absolutely not.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: We'll talk me about that next week. But they're both like,
Speaker 1: how how is an elephant pooping fifteen pounds and a
Speaker 1: dog poopy? You know, like, how are they all pooping?
Speaker 3: The poop from like the time that it exits the
Speaker 3: anus until the time it's done on the floor is
Speaker 3: twelve seconds plus or minus from an elephant to a
Speaker 3: dog to a dog?
Speaker 2: True?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: Even yeah?
Speaker 1: How how the mucus? The mucus is the mucus that
Speaker 1: lines are intestines. It keeps everything moving along, getting there,
Speaker 1: getting out there smoothly. I just love this so much,
Speaker 1: So glad that you also found a twelve second Yes,
Speaker 1: that's all I have for like the commonalities.
Speaker 3: Though for changed my life forever though me too. Oh
Speaker 3: We're going to talk more about it next week. The
Speaker 3: twelve seconds will come up. I guess the number is
Speaker 3: the magic number. We should be able to poop in
Speaker 3: twelve seconds because we have cylindrical poops, just like all
Speaker 3: of these mammals that they model.
Speaker 1: I mean fiber. Is that the bottom line.
Speaker 3: Paper was out of Georgia Tech. For a second, I
Speaker 3: thought it was also out of Davis, and I was
Speaker 3: going to give them another shadow, but it was Georgia Tech.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I read it book I found because
Speaker 1: I was still loved it. I need to know more.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as far as commonality is like, that's all
Speaker 1: I've got fascinating. But the scent, the shape, the color, texture,
Speaker 1: and location of poop, they vary so much across the
Speaker 1: animal kingdom, and they can tell us about the animal
Speaker 1: that produced it and the kind of life that it
Speaker 1: is leading. Okay, right, so scent can tell us what
Speaker 1: the animal ate. Carnivore poop tends to smell much worse
Speaker 1: to us than herb of war poop to us, although
Speaker 1: scent is definitely again in the nose of the beholder,
Speaker 1: right Like, yes, as anyone who has had a dog
Speaker 1: can attest watching as their dog rolls in something unspeakably foul.
Speaker 1: I'm just like why why? Still, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons why. Actually, scent is a really powerful method
Speaker 1: of communication. So, for instance, it can alert a predator
Speaker 1: to prey species nearby. This is one reason why your
Speaker 1: dog might be rolling in poop just to be like
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a prey, yeah, or like I
Speaker 1: am you know mighty predators smell my body, my own feces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it might be like a disguising of scent. Sharks
Speaker 1: apparently can recognize the poop of seals and humans and
Speaker 1: have may use it as a queue to like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's prey nearby certain sharks. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like you hear so much about how
Speaker 3: much sharks can scent blood, you know, like they can
Speaker 3: sense blood. But I never thought about them using poop
Speaker 3: as a That makes sense because it would just be
Speaker 3: floating in the right interesting.
Speaker 1: And also poop would tell you more about the individual
Speaker 1: animal than.
Speaker 3: Blood and just blood yeah right, blood is just I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Blood is also a cue, but like, yeah, poop apparently
Speaker 1: too juicy juicy seal yep up ahead to the right,
Speaker 1: take a left at the booi.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Some species bury their poop or they shoot their
Speaker 1: poop in a projectile manner to throw predators if the
Speaker 1: trail butterflies do this called fresh shooting.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: The smell of poop can also signal to other members
Speaker 1: of your species, like, hey, this is mine, this is
Speaker 1: my territory. Paws off. Big cats do that, hippo, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also hippos do this. Big cats do this. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: their they'll tails will be like helicopters, and they're.
Speaker 3: Like just like just getting their over the little spot.
Speaker 1: Some species have specialized glands that leave concentrated sense like dogs.
Speaker 1: They might even have Other species have communal latrines where
Speaker 1: they all go poop. It's kind of like a very
Speaker 1: stinky message board, like hey, what's everyone up to? Who's
Speaker 1: down to like party this weekend? There. I don't think
Speaker 1: they hang out. I'm can just poop and walk away. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Certain infections might make poop have a distinctive smell like
Speaker 1: seed iff kind of warns like, hey, this is I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not good. Yeah, don't roll in this. And
Speaker 1: for those species that have a keen sense of smell.
Speaker 1: Poop is a rich source of formation, and we humans
Speaker 1: have harnessed that power for our own data gathering. What
Speaker 1: oh yeah, tell me so. There are several researchers that
Speaker 1: have trained dogs to search for and alert to the
Speaker 1: poops of certain species to help with like estimating biodiversity
Speaker 1: or where animals are distributed in a region, things like
Speaker 1: territory size, habitat preference, diet composition, and so on. It's
Speaker 1: hard for us to find poop in a landscape, but
Speaker 1: a dog.
Speaker 3: Is, like, they know exactly where it is.
Speaker 1: You just got to train to not roll in it.
Speaker 3: So they use the dogs to find the poop and
Speaker 3: then they examine them.
Speaker 1: They'll look at the poop yet.
Speaker 3: Yeah fascinating. Yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 1: There are even whale poop sniffing dogs. Whale poop whale
Speaker 1: poop sniffing dogs. Oh yeah, whale poop is I cut
Speaker 1: a huge There was like a quote about the different
Speaker 1: fl likes, colors, and shapes that whale poop can come in.
Speaker 3: About it, Do the dog sniff the whale poop on
Speaker 3: the like when it washes up on the shore.
Speaker 1: I think they go on boats.
Speaker 3: They go on boats and they can sniff it from the.
Speaker 1: Water, I think because it's pretty diffuse, like it'll just
Speaker 1: coo yeah, and like.
Speaker 3: A plume whale poop so much.
Speaker 1: And so there are some dogs that will, like I
Speaker 1: think it's orcs specifically that they'll like track individual whales
Speaker 1: to be like okay, let's now test the water or
Speaker 1: test the poop, and like let's check their health. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I know that's so cool. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: And so we may not be able to smell as
Speaker 1: well as our canine companions, but once we get our
Speaker 1: hands on some poop, there is really like no end
Speaker 1: to what we can tell. So, Aaron, you took us
Speaker 1: through the Bristol stool scale. But that's just one species.
Speaker 1: Consider the variation that you might find if you are
Speaker 1: tracking a bear, a black bear throughout throughout the course
Speaker 1: of a year, right, Like where does that bear live
Speaker 1: on the east, you know, in the east, on the west,
Speaker 1: north or south? How does that influence its diet? Is
Speaker 1: it a cicada year? Is it living in a more
Speaker 1: urban environment and digging in trash? Or is it just
Speaker 1: like total wilderness? Is it eating huckleberries or blackberries, fish
Speaker 1: or squirrels. You know, like there's is it an older
Speaker 1: bear or a baby bear? There are there parasites, is
Speaker 1: it stressed? I mean, poop is an informational pile of gold.
Speaker 1: Even if we don't know who's poop we've just stumbled
Speaker 1: upon on a hike in the woods, we can usually
Speaker 1: make some guesses based on its shape or its size.
Speaker 1: Carnivores tend to poop less than herbivores. Their scat often
Speaker 1: will contain like hair or bones, and so if you
Speaker 1: see that, you're like, oh, carnivor, and it comes in
Speaker 1: a more cylindrical shape. Herbivores, on the other hand, poop
Speaker 1: way more and their poop tends to be floatier with
Speaker 1: plant material. So that's carnivor. If you're twoing an on YouTube,
Speaker 1: we have some samples some herbivor poop, some herbi bore poop.
Speaker 1: So that's like mountain lion and rabbit right there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so like the herb over poop, it's like floating or poop.
Speaker 1: There's plant material, and that it could vary from like
Speaker 1: sheep pellets to cow pies and so on, And it
Speaker 1: depends in part on how much moisture an animal retains.
Speaker 3: Of course, of course we know.
Speaker 1: So for example, we think of these rabbit pellets as
Speaker 1: little hard balls. But rabbits also produce another type of
Speaker 1: poop that is softer and more nutrient dense, and we
Speaker 1: don't really see this type of poop because they produce
Speaker 1: it in their dens and they typically eat it straight
Speaker 1: away right from the source.
Speaker 3: They eat it themselves.
Speaker 1: They eat it themselves. I mean a lot of animals
Speaker 1: will eat their baby's poop too, and that's for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Part it's like re extraction of nutrients.
Speaker 1: And it's not just rabbits. It's a lot mice, cows,
Speaker 1: termites sometimes again it's like nutrient reabsorption. Cows will tell
Speaker 1: you in a second it could be to conceal the
Speaker 1: poop of their offspring from predators or some researchers, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to cows, think it might be a
Speaker 1: strategy to refresh the gut microbiota during about of intestinal disease.
Speaker 1: So like when cows are really showing like not good poops,
Speaker 1: will sometimes eat it to be like do I need
Speaker 1: to get something like that?
Speaker 3: That's so interesting? Like why would you want to eat
Speaker 3: the poop? You would think like, let me eat my
Speaker 3: friends poop.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If my friend's not pooping bad and I'm pooping bat,
Speaker 3: I'll eat my friends poop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's find the best cap I hear they and make
Speaker 1: a little meal.
Speaker 3: They eat their own I.
Speaker 1: Think they eat their own.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And before we turn up our noses at this, it's
Speaker 1: probably too late. Some of the most expensive coffee in
Speaker 1: the world is made from beans that have passed through
Speaker 1: the bowels of a palm. Civet civit coffee. Coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kobe luwak, it's the civic coffee. It's not the only
Speaker 1: prized Pooh products. Okay, there's also ambergriss.
Speaker 3: Ambergriss? What is that?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad you asked. I am so glad
Speaker 1: you asked. I'm just gonna tell you anyway, but well
Speaker 1: tell me that we're asking. For over a thousand years,
Speaker 1: ambergriss has been one of the most valuable and sought
Speaker 1: after natural substances. What is it? It is a hardened
Speaker 1: mass of fecal material and undigested squid beaks that forms
Speaker 1: in the intestines and rectum of about five percent of
Speaker 1: sperm whales.
Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, let.
Speaker 1: Me know if you need me to reread.
Speaker 3: That, can you just so that I can really sure?
Speaker 1: Okay, hardened mass of fecal material and undigested squid beaks.
Speaker 3: They're just chunks of yeah.
Speaker 1: That forms in the intestines and rectum of about five
Speaker 1: percent of sperm whales five percent.
Speaker 3: So it's basically constipated sperm whale rectal mass exactly. And
Speaker 3: people eat this or oh, they do.
Speaker 1: All kinds of things with it, okay. So the reason
Speaker 1: that it like forms into a hard mass, so of
Speaker 1: course sperm whales eat squids. They can't digest their beaks,
Speaker 1: and so usually they'll vomit the beaks up. That is
Speaker 1: your strategy. Because whale poop is liquid, and if some
Speaker 1: get through all the way, it just gets stuck.
Speaker 3: It's like a beez or exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so because the the poop, like the rectum can't
Speaker 1: relax enough to let the poop or to let the
Speaker 1: squid beaks through, and so then it just sort of
Speaker 1: forms and forms into these beaks will mold together formatively,
Speaker 1: is masturpated. It's like a hardened ball of huge chunk
Speaker 1: of hardened whale poop and squidbeaks, and what happens there's
Speaker 1: kind of two different schools with thought. One is that
Speaker 1: finally the rectum relaxes enough to let it out. The
Speaker 1: person whose book I read was like, I don't think
Speaker 1: that happens. I think that it bursts and the whale dies.
Speaker 3: The whale dice. Yeah, so people aren't killing sperm whales
Speaker 3: to get this. I mean, I know they killed them.
Speaker 1: There was they would have, and they probably did for
Speaker 1: a while. So for a long time this was called
Speaker 1: floating gold because people were just finding it on the
Speaker 1: surfaces of the ocean and they were like, this smells amazing.
Speaker 1: This is like we could use this for everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: listen possibly, oh, I mean yeah. Uh and so but
Speaker 1: then it was when whaling kind of picked up in
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds eighteen hundreds that people finally were like,
Speaker 1: they would kill a whale and be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's ambergriss.
Speaker 3: Can you believe it? They kicked it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the most Finally it was like the
Speaker 1: different theories like, oh, I think it's what I can't
Speaker 1: remember some.
Speaker 3: Of the series.
Speaker 1: Okay, they used it for medicine, a condiment an aphrodisiac,
Speaker 1: and it is still today incorporated as a fixative and
Speaker 1: a musky scent in perfumes. Fixative meaning like it makes
Speaker 1: the smell like the scent stay stronger. So it's still
Speaker 1: used today. And it is I mean floating gold. So
Speaker 1: there was a chunk of ambergris found in nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: that weighed four hundred and fifty five kilograms massive, massive,
Speaker 1: and it sold then in nineteen fourteen for twenty three
Speaker 1: thousand pounds, which in today's money is three point four
Speaker 1: million pounds or four and a half million dollars, so
Speaker 1: that it's more in gold. It's more than gold. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that is definitely.
Speaker 3: Not right, but okay, uh, this is I am fascinating you.
Speaker 3: If we like checked on the back of like a
Speaker 3: perfume bottle, and if it says ambergriss on it, that
Speaker 3: means it is it is constipated sperm whale.
Speaker 1: I mean I've never I've never looked at the back
Speaker 1: of a perfume bottle and saw a list of ingredients.
Speaker 1: But I think you would probably be able to find
Speaker 1: perfumes that contain ambergriss. Do you want to know what
Speaker 1: it smells like?
Speaker 3: Yes? Okay.
Speaker 1: According to a New Scientist article, it has a rich
Speaker 1: and complex odor consisting of quote, fine tobacco, the wood
Speaker 1: of old churches, the smell of the tide, sandalwood, fresh earth,
Speaker 1: and seaweed in the sun.
Speaker 3: I believe seaweed fresh tide, because let me tell you,
Speaker 3: I've smelled a lot.
Speaker 4: Of my life.
Speaker 1: I want it to be fine tobacco in the wood
Speaker 1: of old churches stecifically.
Speaker 3: That's quite specific.
Speaker 1: What about an old shirt? You know, there's how old?
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't have any answer.
Speaker 1: I don't either, I have no answers. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: left totally baffled. Still, Okay, Ambergris and Kobe Luoc done.
Speaker 1: They may be treasured as poop novelties. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to move on from Ambergris? Are you ever going to
Speaker 1: be ready? Good? Twelve seconds as But these two, they're
Speaker 1: not the only way that poop can be used. Poop
Speaker 1: can be used as fuel, as insulation, as insect repellent,
Speaker 1: as fertilizer, as building material, as paper. One elephant can
Speaker 1: produce enough dung in one day to make one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen sheets of paper. How do you make paper
Speaker 1: from fiber from the undigested cool plant material?
Speaker 3: And people doing that can I buy elephant poop.
Speaker 1: Paper google it? Okay, yeah, well you know we will
Speaker 1: after this, we'll make some Yeah, we can DNA test
Speaker 1: it to determine the diet of an animal or catch
Speaker 1: a criminal. This was done by matching DNA of dog
Speaker 1: feces at the scene of a crime to dog poop
Speaker 1: on the suspect shoe.
Speaker 3: Oh fascinating, isn't that wild? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean talking about like spinking outside the box.
Speaker 3: Coming from that dog. It was that same pile of poop. Yep,
Speaker 3: shcause they.
Speaker 1: Saw it, Like I think in the crime scene photos
Speaker 1: there was like a yeah, like a shmear like the
Speaker 1: dog poop smear, and then someone had it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why you gotta clean your shoes.
Speaker 1: I mean, or just like not you know, murder people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you choose. But poop is so crucial ecologically
Speaker 1: in seed dispersal and parasite transmission. But the most important
Speaker 1: role of poop is in nutrient redistribution. Critters like dung
Speaker 1: beetles that move and berry poop soil microbes that transform
Speaker 1: it into plant food. Animals like hippos and otters that
Speaker 1: live in water and on land, and they move nutrients
Speaker 1: across those boundaries. Oh interesting, whales that beat at lower
Speaker 1: depth and then rise to poop and breathe. They redistribute
Speaker 1: nutrients across that depth. Fish poop and whale poop that
Speaker 1: helps to offset ocean acidification. Like, all of these are
Speaker 1: critical players in the poop nutrient cycle, but we humans
Speaker 1: are making it harder for them to do their work.
Speaker 1: As a planet, we are producing more poop than we
Speaker 1: have ever before produced for more people and more animals, livestock,
Speaker 1: more livestock. Yeah, and it's not even across the landscape.
Speaker 1: History has never seen the likes of the factory farming
Speaker 1: that exists throughout the world today. Okay, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you some numbers. So in nineteen sixty one, there were
Speaker 1: approximately four hundred million pigs, nine hundred and forty million
Speaker 1: cows around the world around the world, one point three
Speaker 1: billion sheep and goats, and three point nine billion chickens.
Speaker 1: Just over sixty years later, in twenty twenty three, which
Speaker 1: is the most recent data I could find, we are
Speaker 1: at one billion pigs, which is more than double, one
Speaker 1: point six billion cattle from nine to forty million, two
Speaker 1: point two billion sheep and goats, and from three point
Speaker 1: nine billion chickens in nineteen sixty one, we're at twenty
Speaker 1: nine billion chickens.
Speaker 3: And we wonder why bird flu?
Speaker 1: Do we wonder why bird flu? We know exactly why
Speaker 1: bird flu? Yeah, oh my god. And humans have more
Speaker 1: than doubled over that time, from three billion to eight billion.
Speaker 3: But all of those numbers were like more than double
Speaker 3: over the amount of humans.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, each of us humans poops about one percent
Speaker 1: of our body weight a day, so one of our
Speaker 1: entire selves every few months.
Speaker 3: Wow, we poop our weight every few months.
Speaker 1: Each year, Domestic animals produce about eight trillion pounds of poop,
Speaker 1: which is ten thousand Empire state buildings or seven hundred
Speaker 1: Great Pyramids of Giza.
Speaker 3: You can't poop, can't. I can't poop.
Speaker 1: That's the best visualization because we can even still, how
Speaker 1: do we? How do we envision envisions? And I can
Speaker 1: envision the single Empire states? I know.
Speaker 3: That's how much poop. That's more than New York City
Speaker 3: worth of poop?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, yeah, oh I think, Oh, next episode,
Speaker 1: I have a New York City statistic. But that excess poop,
Speaker 1: that incredible amount of poop that we are pooping now
Speaker 1: it doesn't translate into more dung beetles and more nutrient
Speaker 1: dense soils. Like I mentioned at the top, dung beetles
Speaker 1: can be picky about the pooh they use, but even
Speaker 1: those that, like cattle poop are under threat because of
Speaker 1: the pesticides that livestock are treated with, like ivermectin, which
Speaker 1: is then like excreted in their poop and is toxic
Speaker 1: to dung beetles. And so there are like dung beetle
Speaker 1: they are like threatened dung beetles, or like deforestation can
Speaker 1: also reduce dung beetle.
Speaker 3: Relate on other things too, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm singling out dung beetles because they're really charismatic,
Speaker 1: you know, our shirts, like you know, who else would
Speaker 1: want poop on a shirt? But this ripples far beyond
Speaker 1: dung beetle populations, Like we are facing a global poop catastrophe,
Speaker 1: too much of it and in all the wrong places. Potastrophe,
Speaker 1: cock catastrophe. No, actually, I like that, did you say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, a catastrophe that's very funny, Thank you. Wow.
Speaker 1: But you know, in the past when poop has come
Speaker 1: up on this podcast, it's mostly been in the context
Speaker 1: of like public health, right, Like that wrong place has
Speaker 1: been in our water or our food supplies. But that's
Speaker 1: just one component. What about our farm runoff, our waterways,
Speaker 1: our pasture lands leeched of nutrients, and the poop just
Speaker 1: going down the river?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to use these two episodes to
Speaker 1: approach poop from a different perspective than the typical public
Speaker 1: health one that we usually go with. It's one where
Speaker 1: we suspend our disgust and we consider what poop represents
Speaker 1: not as a waste, but as a hugely valuable substance.
Speaker 1: And hopefully today I have left you with a little
Speaker 1: bit more appreciation for crap, or at least some fun
Speaker 1: facts to share. Twelve seconds Ambergris And next week I'll
Speaker 1: go into how we attempted to solve our poop problem
Speaker 1: over the centuries and what the future of waste management
Speaker 1: might hold. And that's all I've got for you today
Speaker 1: on poop. I love it, except for sources erin.
Speaker 3: That was so much fun.
Speaker 1: I'm glad.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: Well that's good because we have another episode next week.
Speaker 3: Perfect yay, Oh wow, that was really good. We should
Speaker 3: tell everyone where they could read more.
Speaker 1: Of There is so much I mean, narrowing down the
Speaker 1: narrative for poop was impossible, ridiculous. Yeah, and so there
Speaker 1: is so much more out there that you can read.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you a few examples. So a couple
Speaker 1: of books, one by Joe Roman called Eat, Poop Dye,
Speaker 1: How Animals Make Our worlds?
Speaker 3: Poop Die, Poop Die? What else do you do?
Speaker 1: And then another on this is I think my favorite
Speaker 1: title of a book that I've come across lately. So
Speaker 1: it's by David Waltner. Tow's The Origin of Feces.
Speaker 3: The Origin of Feces, so.
Speaker 1: Good, it's good. And then there's a paper by Robert
Speaker 1: Clark The Origin of ambergris, and then by Nicols at
Speaker 1: All from twenty from two thousand and eight Ecological Functions
Speaker 1: and Ecosystem Services provided by Scarabina Da dung Beetles. I
Speaker 1: love it, and more on the website.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my sources are not as much like fun because
Speaker 3: I mostly used a textbook that was incredibly boring, but
Speaker 3: shout out to the people who wrote it because it
Speaker 3: was quite useful. It was called the Digestive System from
Speaker 3: Basic Scientis to Clinical Practice. I didn't read the whole thing.
Speaker 3: It was like four hundred plus pages, but it's quite useful,
Speaker 3: so especially if you want more about poop. I also
Speaker 3: have a few different papers here. There's the Characterization of
Speaker 3: Feces in Urine, A review of the literature to inform
Speaker 3: Advanced treatment technology. I actually really loved that. It was
Speaker 3: a paper from twenty fifteen in Critical Reviews and Environmental
Speaker 3: Science and Technology by Rose at All. And then there
Speaker 3: was a paper that I or a book that I
Speaker 3: only read part of, but I really enjoyed the parts
Speaker 3: that I read, so I'm going to give it a
Speaker 3: shout out. It was called Flush, The Remarkable Science of
Speaker 3: an Unlikely Treasure. Did you read that book? No? It
Speaker 3: was good, it was interesting.
Speaker 1: Wow, I looked up so many poop books.
Speaker 3: I don't I came across this book, but I enjoyed
Speaker 3: the parts that I read. But there's a whole bunch more.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, there's literally so many more. We'll post them
Speaker 3: all on our website, this post dot com.
Speaker 1: We will. We will thank you again to the provider
Speaker 1: of our first hand account.
Speaker 3: It's I think I can't express enough thank you so
Speaker 3: much for sharing that story with this. I will cry
Speaker 3: laughing thinking about it once again.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, me too. Thank you also to Bloodmobile for
Speaker 1: providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 3: Thank you to everyone and Exactly Right one, including everyone
Speaker 3: here today and Tom and Leanna and Brent and Pete
Speaker 3: and everybody who's involved in every is possible.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And thank you to you listeners for listening
Speaker 1: and watching. Yeah, however you partake in this podcast, we appreciate,
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Please subscribe to the Exactly Right YouTube channel or us
Speaker 3: on the podcasters that you like. Yeah, we don't say
Speaker 3: that enough. We don't say but it helps us, so
Speaker 3: thank you for doing it.
Speaker 1: We just say that a lot.
Speaker 3: You're right, we do.
Speaker 1: And thank you also to our fantastic patrons. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate your support. You mean the world.
Speaker 3: Yes, truly, truly, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, until next time, wash your hair out, you filthy animals.