by Bart King
When visiting the zoo, you may have noticed that some of the primates may throw poop at the human spectators. Can you blame them? If I got thrown behind bars and had to stay on a place called “Monkey Island,” I’d probably practice my fastball with a few grumpies myself!
Humans can be even worse than primates when they get mad. For example, in 1995, a bank executive named Gerard Finneran pitched a fit onboard an international flight. Angry that no one would serve him more alcohol, Finneran climbed aboard the drink cart, pooped on it, and then walked around the aircraft smearing his feces in the aisles.
At his court appearance, Finneran told the judge, “I promise you will never hear of me doing anything like this again.” Gee, what a relief!
Punishing poopy wrongdoers reminds me of a story called The Divine Comedy, written by Italian poet Dante Alighieri in the early 1300s. In his story, Dante is given a tour of both hell and paradise. While visiting hell, Dante notices that there is poop in the river Styx! (Raw sewage in the netherworld?) Dante also sees that people who were suck-ups and flatterers during their lives have to basically roll around in poop in the afterlife.
I guess Dante didn’t like brown-nosers!
Philosophy and Poop
Famous Greek philosopher Heraclitus (540–480 BCE) suffered from a medical condition called edema. He apparently thought that a lot of cow manure could solve his problem. So he had a lot of wet, steaming cow manure gathered together. Then he immersed his body in the cow manure. Then he drowned in the cow manure.
Fascinating!
Finally, let’s end this section with the poetry of Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. Over two thousand years ago, he wrote:
Till now I thought
That death befell
The untalented alone.
If those with talent, too,
Must die
Surely they make
Better manure.
Poop in the Animal Kingdom
Hey, did you know there’s a company that makes paper out of the poop of Australian marsupials like wombats and kangaroos? The company is on the island-state of Tasmania, and the kangaroo poop paper is called “Roo-Poo”!
You can probably guess the problem the company had with the envelopes they made. That’s right, nobody wanted to lick them! For research, I decided to see what kangaroo poo looks like, and it’s pretty much the way I’d imagined it: poo-ey. But it made me wonder: What animal has the biggest poop on the planet?
But then I thought, “That’s dumb. Isn’t there more to life than wondering what animal makes the most colossal caca?”
Of course there is!
I’ll think of something in a second.
All right, nothing better comes to mind, so we’d better look into this! When it comes to the size of their grumpies, big animals don’t necessarily make big poops. For example, a full-grown moose can weigh a thousand pounds, but its droppings might be an inch long. Heck, there are wombats that poop bigger than that!
When a whale poops, a lot does come out. But between the poop coming out underwater and being rather liquidy to start with, there’s no good way to judge the size of a whale’s poop pile.
Liquid Gold
Sperm whales eat squid. Lots of squid. But as anyone who’s seen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea knows, squids have sharp pointy beaks. These are hard to digest, and so sperm whales have a special fatty mucus in their intestines that safely coats the beaks in a gooey mess.
After the sperm whale poops out the mucus/squid beak mess, it’s called “ambergris.” This has a unique smell that perfume-makers love to use in expensive products like Chanel No. 5. How rare is ambergris? Let’s just say that you can get over $4,000 for a pound of the stuff!
As for elephants, they can really deliver the goods. But the biggest poop pile I’ve seen is from a rhinoceros. (Just imagine an average-size horse poop and then multiply by ten and you’ll get an idea of what I mean.) But I guess if we’re going to talk big poop, maybe we should start with the dinosaurs!
Scientists are constantly analyzing the fossils of animals from millions of years ago. This goes for their poop, too! The word we use for fossilized poops is coprolites, or “dung-stones.”
These poops are obviously pretty old, in that they have turned into ROCKS with no organic matter left in them. Even so, scientists have noticed that anyone who sees a coprolite will try to smell it!
Coprolites are rare—or maybe just really hard to recognize! That’s because poop is soft, and it’s likely to be stepped on, rained on, and squished before turning into a fossil. The largest stone-poop from a meat-eating dinosaur is currently a seventeen-inch-long turd that probably came from a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
That’s some serious poop!
Shrew Poop Is Good Food
The tiniest mammal in the world is the shrew. Although its poop is not very impressive, the Borneo tree shrew uses an organic toilet.
You might have seen pictures of pitcher plants before. These are tropical plants that grow pitcher-shaped pouches filled with a bug-attracting liquid. After the bugs are trapped in this juice, the pitcher plant absorbs nutrients from the insects. But in Borneo, the pitcher plant works a little differently. Tree shrews come and eat sap from the top of the plant’s pitcher. Since the shrew’s butt is often situated right over the pouch, the small mammal then poops down into it. (What’s weird is that the pitcher even looks like a toilet.) And the pitcher plant then processes and feeds on the shrew poop!
Paleoscatologist Karen Chin has found the poops of a duck-billed dinosaur called Maiasaura. Poops from this dinosaur usually look sort of like really gigantic cow patties.
paleoscatologist: A scientist who specializes in fossilized poop.
It’s not just paleoscatologists who save reptile poop. Daniel Bennett is a herpetologist, or expert on reptiles. And as a PhD student, Bennett traveled to the Philippines to gather samples of the rare Butaan lizard. In the process, he became a lizard poop expert! “By the beginning of the third year of my PhD, I knew more about lizard feces than I had ever thought possible,” he said. For five long years, he gathered his data. But, one day, when he was out doing fieldwork, someone threw away his entire lizard-poop collection!
That must have been a sad day.
Second Time’s a Charm
Beavers eat tree bark. And after a beaver eats bark, it poops out an oatmeal-looking pile of partially digested bark. Then the beaver eats its poop. After the beaver digests it a second time, the poop comes out looking like sawdust.
Poop Eaters
Dung beetles eat poop. “What’s a dung beetle?” you ask? Aren’t you paying attention? It’s a beetle that eats poop!
coprophagy: Eating poop.
A dung beetle’s whole life has to do with poop. For example, its mating ritual literally revolves around poop. Working together, a male and female dung beetle roll some poop into a ball. And it’s true love.
Dung beetles eat all sorts of dung: elephant dung, camel dung, sheep dung, you name it. But most dung beetles prefer horse dung. Now you know.
Similar to the dung beetle is the scarab beetle. When it finds a nice steaming pile of dung, it sorts through it, gathering and rolling only the purest and tastiest parts of the poop. Once the dung ball is about the size of your fist, the beetle starts rolling it away from the original poop pile so that it can eat it in peace. (“Roll, roll, roll the poop . . .”) But, of course, the dung ball is way bigger than the beetle, so this can take a while.
In the privacy of the poop, male and female scarab beetles can lay eggs. Then their larvae can safely grow up in the poop. And if they get hungry, the larvae can just take a bite out of their nursery!
Poop Happens...to Be a Good Place to Live
Amphibians need to keep moist in order to survive. And that’s why small toads in Sri Lanka bury themselves inside piles of elephant poop during the hot, dry part of the year!
* * *
[10] Unless you said “yes.” (That’s the wrong answer!)
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[11] I updated the language. The original reads, “Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech and swere it were a relyk of a seint, though it were with thy fundement depeint!”
It’s a Gross Job, But I Don’t Want to Do It!
There are a lot of gross jobs in the world. And I had the worst one of all.
In high school, I was a cook at a well-known fried-chicken chain. And one of my jobs included the four most feared words in the English language:
Cleaning the grease traps.
This job is pretty much what it sounds like. All day long, the chickens were cooked in boiling grease, and as they bubbled in their oily lava, bits of chicken skin, fat, and breading fell to the bottom of the cooker. That was the grease trap.
Toward the end of the day, the grease trap was opened. Kneeling under the pressure cooker, I got to enjoy the sight of brown molten grease mixed with cooked chicken bits pouring out of it. The whole concoction looked like diarrhea spewing out of a robot. (Oh, sorry about that!)
Although it was pretty bad, I wonder how “grease-trap cleaner” stacks up against some of the other horrible jobs throughout history:
Royal butt wiper: In medieval kingdoms, the king was deemed too important to wipe his own butt. So someone else did it for him. And since toilet paper wasn’t invented until centuries later, it was important for a butt wiper to have soft hands and a gentle touch.
garbageologist: This person studies garbage. Next!
leech collector: How do you collect leeches? You walk through swamps full of leeches. Then you pick them off your body to start your collection.
spitboy: A human-powered rotisserie! If an entire animal was impaled on a stake (known as a “spit”) and put over a fire, it needed to be turned. The spitboy took care of the turning!
rat catcher: During the Age of Exploration, many sailing ships had full-time rat catchers onboard. The longer the ship was at sea, the nicer the crew was to the rat catcher. (The fresh rat meat was highly prized!)
forensic entomologist: Police detectives who are also insect specialists solve murders by investigating the insects found on dead bodies. And the bugs get to help. (Corpse maggots and cheese skippers can put criminals behind bars?)
hazardous materials diver: As you know, one in five people pees in the pool. So the next time you’re taking a dip, remember to put on a diving suit that completely covers your body! It’s helpful if you have to swim through any sewage. (You know, like if your cousin tries to force some gas out and makes a poopy mistake? “Toxic spill!”)
Hmmm, maybe cleaning the grease traps wasn’t so bad after all. Let’s see, what other bad jobs are out there? Actually, you’ve done some of them yourself. After all, housework is really gross. For example, dust mites are flying all over the place when you vacuum! Heck, dust mites live inside the vacuum. The only thing that outnumbers dust mites in your house are dust mite corpses and dust mite poops. What are these horrible creatures eating? You! (Your dead skin, that is.)
As for working in the kitchen, forget about it. The kitchen sponge might be one of the most revolting things in your whole house. It’s swarming with bacteria. When you wipe down a counter, you’re smearing bacteria all over the place!
The Bacteria Bunch
This Job Sucks!
Do you think it would be better to clean up after living people or dead ones? Dunno! But I do know that I don’t like to vacuum the house. I mention this because plastic surgeons vacuum fat from living people. That sucks slightly more than vacuuming the carpet.
Okay, but everyone has to do housework. What about more specialized jobs, like ones where people work alongside flesh-eating beetles? The good people at Skulls Unlimited International can tell you all about this. Skulls Unlimited is a company where people clean and polish skulls and other bones from a variety of animals. (Including humans!)
But how do you get a nice tidy skull from a messy decapitated head? The process begins with the removal of the head’s tissues . . . by hand. Blech! But how do you get all the little pieces of meat off? By putting a bunch of flesh-eating beetles on the skull to eat the leftovers!
Is this nasty? Well, the owner of Skulls Unlimited is Jay Villemarette, and he said, “It is nasty.” So there you have it! But my favorite quote came from one of his employees about what’s really gross: “I’ve been waist-deep in a dead hippopotamus, and I’d rather do that than change diapers.”
But just as there’s supposedly more than one way to skin a cat, there are also apparently at least two ways to clean skulls. For a second option, let’s visit the people who lived on the Torres Strait Islands near Australia. The tradition in their culture was to cut off the heads of their dead. The heads were then put on top of ant colonies. Between the heat and the ants, it was only a matter of time before there was just a skull there. The skull was then painted red and used for decoration. (Decoration?!)
When You Make a Mess and Can’t Clean It Up Yourself
After a murder, who cleans up the crime scene? Not the police; when their investigation is done, they’re out of there. So there are a number of businesses specializing in cleaning up after crime scenes. They often call themselves “decontamination” services.
Most of these companies will take care of grisly homicide, suicide, and car accident scenes. It’s an odd business. I mean, there aren’t many repeat customers! And as one decontamination expert explains, it’s hard to advertise. “It’s not like I can put out a 2-for-1 coupon,” she says.
Someday I Might Be an Actor!
Here’s a story of a really tough job. But first, you need to know that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet has a scene with the skull of a dead man named Yorick.
Okay, now stick with me: Del Close was a Chicago actor/comedian. Shortly before his death in 1999, Close made his friend Charna Halpern promise to donate his skull to a local theater. That way, Close could play the part of Yorick even though he was dead. See what a hard worker he was? He wanted to stay on the job even after death!
Halpern agreed. But when she asked the people at the hospital if they would cut off Close’s head after he died, they just laughed. And as hard as she looked, Halpern couldn’t find anyone to cut off Close’s head! Eventually, Close was cremated with his head still attached.
So Halpern decided to get a “stand-in skull” from an anatomy shop. She found one that looked right, and then she took it home to pull the skull’s teeth out. She did this because Close had worn dentures! But it was another tough job. As Halpern said, “Pulling teeth is like pulling teeth.” (Everyone’s a comedian!)
Anyway, then Halpern donated the fake “Del Close skull” to a Chicago theater. It was the most famous skull in the city! Years passed, and then a reporter at the Chicago Tribune investigated the story. Halpern confessed to what she had done. (Hey, I don’t blame her; she tried to do the right thing. But take it from me, cutting off your best friend’s head isn’t easy.)
Shrinking Heads
All this talk of decapitation has got me wondering about shrunken heads. These are the actual heads of humans that are small enough to attach to a key ring. But who gets to make them? Is it a hard job? And how did the skulls get so shrimpy?
The answers to these questions come from high in the Andes, where the people of the Jivaros tribe are famed headshrinkers. The Jivaros live in what is now Ecuador and Peru. And back in the day, if you were a member of their tribe and went to battle, you might get lucky and kill somebody. Then you would return home with the head of one of your enemies. Then you’d do the following:
Chop off the head of your enemy. (You already did that, right?)
Make a vertical cut down the back of the head and neck and carefully peel the flesh off the skull. (The decapitated person is now “losing face.”)
Sew the eyes and mouth shut.
Put some small stones around the base of a fire. Hang a pot of water over it. Now boil the head skin for two hours. During this time, you’ll notice that it’s sort of like a wool sweater in t
he dryer: it shrinks!
Pull the head skin out of the water and fill it with some of the hot rocks that you put around the fire. As the rocks cool, replace them with hot sand. Keep replacing the sand until the skin is “cured” and looks smooth from the outside. When you think the curing is done, sew up the slit in the back of the head as you go, so that the sand filling will stay put.
Now hang the head by its hair over a smoky fire for five to eight hours. This will dry it out, shrink it some more, and give the head the shiny, leathery look you’re looking for. The shrunken head should be about the size of your fist!