Scatology (POOP) with Rachel Santymire

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Oh hey, it's your own Internet dad here with an episode you've all just been chomping at the bit for. Will she go there? You wondered she went there? Boy? Howdy did she? But don't worry. Okay, this one it doesn't get too gross.

I don't know what am I talking about. It's so gross.

It's an entire episode on animal poo and sometimes ours because we are, after all, animals. But I tried to just keep it as informative and as illuminating as an entire episode on animal excrement can be. But before number two, number one, I want to let you know everyone, I will be at cal Academy on March fifth, That is this Thursday in San Francisco. I'll be at First Fridays in La on March sixth for their Secrets from the

Voice of Ali Datward.

The Ologies podcast has given my years peace during the hour I spend with Cookie daily and we have both learned so much. Cookie's favorite episode is, of course, Ornithology. They say, key, this one's for you. Let's just roll up our sleeves and just dive right into it scatology. It comes from the Greek for feces. You're welcome. Scatology is a scientific study or the chemical analysis of feces, while coprology is scatology. What.

Okay?

So both same. Also both can mean toilet humor or a special interest in poops in a sexy way. Okay. So for this scatology episode, we talk a lot about zoo poops. And in fact, I got a VIP tour in which I saw a freezer that was kind of like a porta potty on Noah's art.

The coolest thing about our labs maybe is our freezers. Yeah, this one might be locked, but you.

Yeah, we keep our freezers locked.

So we have black Rhino, Pygmy Hippo, red river hog who. We have our some of our octopus stuff in here. We have our gravy zebra background camels are our draft or black Bear, our Japanese Macaq, Pickney, Soloris, Diana Monkey, I Tamaron, polar Bear. That's just what lives in this freezer. Now I have thirteen others. We're gonna go all around the zoom.

We're gonna go through this one for you.

It's a real poop party. I love that it's like, hey, no food or drinking here. You're like, don't worry about it. What's the word I'm thinking like a sharma. It just looks like a lot of rolled up sarma. We have mountain gorillas from Wanda in here. Never know what we have nor freezer. Wait, there's was a geese.

Yeah, we have goose poop.

Goose poop, yeah that's in here.

That's in here or not, but we definitely are doing goose poop.

Eastern massasaka rattlesnakes, snakes poop, yes, not very often, but they poop more snow leppers, lots of snow leppers is rarely.

Gerbils ye, yeah, terble poo, very small lad mice poo we have. We have congo there. There are probably gorilla samples low on gorillas, and we have mountain gram red squirrel samples. That is probably that's even more rare than a blackfoot of fair. I think there's only thirty to forty left in Arizona.

Yeah, that's amazing. It really looks like if Marie Condo kept a refrigerator full of shit. Like it's beautiful in there. So this ologist has earned the nickname Doctor Poop she wears it with pride. So she got her bachelors in pre vet science and her masters in animal physiology at Clemson University and then her PhD in Environmental science and Policy at George Mason University. And she is the director of the Davy Center for Epidemiology and under Chronology at

We will study it. So we took a seat and.

We talked all about tiny poos, giant poos, pebble poos, pet poos, whale poos, famous otters, French confections, glitter pills, wombat bricks, what poos says about you and how and why this animal scientist and conservationist analyzes the feces of countless species and loves it. So please curl up for the scoop on this rare science with scatologist Doctor Poop aka doctor Rachel Santomeyer. So shy, like, just pretendate's not there,

I guess. Yeah. My parents are so proud.

Hey, doctor in front of anything is great. You're doing great, literally, doctor from of anything in theory. Yes, I guess.

They don't really talk to their bridge club about what I do, and they just say work at the zoo, so just places.

So now, how did the nickname doctor Poop come to be?

You know? It was really our learning staff trying to get kids excited about the science and oh man, kids love poop, right, parents not so much until they started to hear the science and they realized how cool it is, and then they eventually start getting really excited about the poop.

So it's a great marketing strategy for real.

Yeah, except for my mom said I was full of shit, so she's got you there to me today, I was like, you laughed, you laughed? Oh thanks, mom.

You've got to get just the best puns in your email in box. Yeah, you know.

My One of my favorite titles of my talk is how fece say Species?

Do you think that there's a big difference culturally between poo and poop? Hmmm, No, I don't think so.

Maybe pooh sounds more cute than poop, yeah, because poop is more like an action in pooh is kind of like get the emoji.

Okay, so quick aside. I look this up and poop used to mean to softly break wind. It was on a monopoetic in nature. But my guess is that enough people had unhappy accidents and whammo boom. Language changes in this case from a gas to a solid. Also, pooh is relatively new word. It first appeared in the nineteen fifties. Just in case you're wondering about the movement of the term. And so tell me about your journey to the Queen of poop.

They also call me the poop porter, right because I don't throw any poop away.

I keep it.

And my strategy is just to buy a new freezer every year, and I have like fourteen around the zoo, and the animal care staff are so nice, toy like make room for my new freezers. The facility guys add new electricals stuff for me. So so but you know, I you know a classic story. I loved animals. We had you know, dogs and cats growing up. I like middle school, I started riding horses. So I love horses and I love to ask people what their favorite animal is,

But I started off.

Thinking that if you loved animals, you became a veterinarian. And so in high school I worked at a vet's office. In college, I was in prevenary science animal science at Clemson University, and so my goal was to become a veterinarian, and I worked at vets offices. I cared for animals, and I applied to at school. I got an interview at Teskegee University in Alabama, and literally one person in front of me changed my course of my career.

I didn't get in.

I didn't get in, and I didn't know what to do because that was my whole plan, that was everything I'd done built up to that career.

I panicked because you know, I had to student loans, you.

Know, you had to start paying these things off in six months when you're out of school. And what happened was the scientist came down from the National Zoo. His name was doctor David Wilt, who unfortunately.

Had just passed away.

He talked about how he was an animal scientist and how he's applying all these technologies, particularly assist to reproductive technologies like artificial insemination, semen collection and evaluation, and cryopreservation, to wildlife, to endangered species like cheetahs and cloud of leopards, and I thought, that's what I want to do. I

Just a quick fyi on blackfooted ferret. The ferret endemic to North America, so because they munch on prairie dogs, and prairie dog habitat is now largely like shopping centers. The species got down to only eighteen individuals at one point, so for her PhD, Rachel studied their reproduction and still works with breeding programs to get their numbers up. There

So you know, a ferret is a mastellid, which is a very stinky species, so you can imagine their FECs. Yes, they are pretty stinky. So I started in nineteen ninety eight at the Smithsonian to work on blackfooted ferret looking at reproductive hormones and seeing how they change seasonally and how they're related to age. And then the other species I started with was the fishing cat. So I don't know if you have a cat, but you know cat

Oh.

Yes. So in the Smithsonian we had the fecal lab. People would leave the fickle lab when I pulled out the fishing cat samples, and it was so bad. I mean, like, you know, you know it's gonna smell in the fecal lab, but when Rachel pulls out those fishing cat samples, people leave.

They just can't take it. I I'm very tolerant of poop.

Yeah, so I didn't mind so much, but yeah, I got that. I was really like a privilege to work on, you know, one of the rarest mammals we have here in North America, and then also another species like the fishing cat. I mean, what's more unique? You know this cat that like dive into water to eat fish. You know, that's pretty cool. So not many cats would do that.

This woman not only does she merrily work.

With Pooh, she calls it a privilege.

So y'all find what you love. Bloom where you're planted, just make sure you're covered in fertilizer. And why do you think you are so tolerant of feces.

Because I've always taking care of animals, whether it was bird poop, gerbil poop, dog poop, cat poop. You know, it's you know all about the poop, fish and poop and so horsepoop man. Yeah, so uh yeah, I just very tolerant. Now, the thing, probably the least favorite thing of my job has been saliva. Oh really, yes, saliva.

Just string from one tube to the next, like that's the thing that grows out. But you know, I'm a mom.

Now, this is before I was a mom, And now I'm like whatever, you know, I can tolerate anything.

But yeah, before that was, I was like, gimme poop please. This life is pretty gross. Somewhere there's a doctor spit. He just doesn't understand you at all. I'm gonna have to look that up. Okay, Yes, I look this up and there is a doctor Spit. So Missouri news station KY three interviewed this local legend who is a blues harmonica player.

His name is doctor Spit something like that. You do not get to pick your nickname. Somebody inebriated in the bar, besides what your name's going to be. So I did a little more digging and found out sadly, doctor Spit aka Ron Alexander is no longer with us, So blues fans have a little more reason to be blue. But yes, in the wisdom of doctor Spit, the nickname chooses you. And now, broadly speaking, what is poop? Hoop poops? Plants

Everybody poops, right, everyone poops, and so yeah, so what happens is we're looking for well for wildlife. In chronology, we're looking at these steroid hormones, and these hormones are related to reproduction, so we can determine pregnancy, we can determine when the female's.

Receptive or an estress.

And then we also look at stress, right, and we always think stress is a bad thing, but really stress is a necessary response that we and animals have to deal with situations. And then we have distress, which is the negative stress that you know, it could be bullying or something that you don't really really is upsetting. And there's also you stress, which is like riding that roller coaster, being super excited, you know. For our animals is getting enrichment,

Oh so when we're done with our stress hormones, we're like, get out of here. Yeah, take the back door. Yeah yeah, we could truly be responding. That's not a healthy thing, right. Yeah.

So they they have their purpose, their job, and then the body gets rid of them, and so we take advantage of that. You know, with human pregnancy tests, you can use urine, right, and that's actually a protein hormone that you're looking for. But for in feces, we're looking at these steroids and it's just really convenient that we can get it from poop because then we don't have to.

Stress the animals out.

It's like we're poop detectives because you know, they literally like you know, the especially here at the zoo, the animal care staff has to pick up the samples. And now they can simply put it in a ziploc bag, put it in the freezer, and I can come along, we can pick it up, we can thiw it, and we can figure out what's going on inside the animal. And that's so important because this they have behaviors. But if you've had a cat or dog, you know that

You got in the kitty catch treats while I was going.

But you know other things when like for example, they're in pain or anything else you can't really understand. Sometimes maybe they're hiding more. And so we integrate behavior animal behavior with inner chronology to really look at the physiology the response that they're having so we can interpret the behavior better. And vice versa too.

And so the zoo keepers, as long as they're poop scooping, they get in there, they take a little handful, if you will, Yeah, and then put it in a ziplock. What just like roll it up like a sausage and pop it in the Yeah.

Well they usually invert the bag and like grab it, you know, you know, it's just like you do with your dog.

Yeah, yeah, same thing.

Yep.

And then how many samples of pooh do you think you have in your seventeen freezer? Don't let anybody of the zoo know this.

I probably we do about we change some of our science recently, but in general we do about eight to ten thousand samples a year.

Oohm.

So that's about, you know, one hundred and thirty thousand samples. If anybody wants to support biobanking, please send us money. Lows we use your freezers, donate to us, you know. And so yeah, but I can't throw them. I can't throw them away because you can't go back in time. And if you want to see how things have changed, which is really important for zoos. We want our animals continuously and we want to see how they change over time,

But now I.

Switched to we use hair now for hormone analysis, and it gives us a slightly different perspective. There's actually some debate about whether the hair, the steroids in the hair, the hormones in the hair are telling you about what happened when the hair was growing or when or what

So yes, both hair and droppings are non invasive relatively, and they can give you different data. But with turds, you know it's pretty recent. Also, let's get gross. Let's zoom in and discuss what doodo really is other than something you usually do not want to look at closely. And now you've had your hands in every kind of pooh I imagine from like geese to hippos to she does what are some commonalities and what are some differences? Like what is stool? Is it mostly bacteria? Is it mostly fiber?

Like what is this? Yeah, it's a combination of everything, right, it's just the waste product of what we ate and what's in our system. And so yeah, it has lots of bacteria, which are sort of our enemy for hormones because it continual us to break down the hormones if we don't get it in the freezer fast.

When you look at all these different.

Species like elephants or black rhinos which we have here at the zoo, it's like all fiber. You're like, how is there any poo in the sample or is it just like cut up hay. You know, it's say with the zebras and horses. You know, it's really like this looks just like hey, with some some poop smeared around it.

But we can actually look at the poop when we get so.

Familiar with our animals here at the zoo, our staff can see the poop samples and know when the staff have accidentally mixed up the bags because you know, they all look like a certain sometimes food item or but like talk and poop kind of looks like little olives, and our different females had like different shapes and size olives, so we knew when they kind of mix them up.

But yeah, the very fibrous, this imagery will stay on my mind for a while.

And then you know, the the apes and the primates, you know, that's just a whole nother story.

But it's more like human. Yeah, it's more like.

Human, and it's definitely more well, I can't say that because the male black rhino feces is pretty stinky. They use a lot of pheromones and odor cues for communication because they're solitary animals. So but yeah, I think one of the worst samples I've had in my lab was actually my own dog's poop.

You's just really wow.

You're just like, you know, the doors get closed, you know, from the stat that work on their computers versus the fecal lab staff, you know, or when we do the polar bear, it's a lot.

Of like fish and stuff that is pretty stinky. Okay, So in a herd of giraffes or a pride of lions, or a party of orangutangs.

I don't know.

I'm just going to hope that a group of rangu tanks is called a party. Actually, hold on, okay, I just looked it up and it's a congress of orangutangs, which wow, I wish our congress has worked like that. But anyway, how do they figure out who left well behind?

But the fecal marker study this is this is one of the best things, one of the best papers I published. I think, very practical. But what do you do when you have a whole bunch of individuals together and you want to sample each individual? It's like, you know, you can either have to have a staff member or volunteer that sits there and waits for them to defecate, which could be a long time, dependent on the species.

Right, And so we.

Devised a way to mark the feces and so you can give them food coloring and make their feces green or well usually green and green and blue come out green. So it's it's kind of hard to find different colors. We've fed glitter to our animals, non toxic glitter of course, non toxic beads, all these different things, seeds, blueberries.

We have seeds, you know, anything that has seeds. So there's a couple couple issues with us.

Okay, so when you feed them bird seed like millet to mark their feces, the house sparrows come and eat it out of the feces before you can follow. Yea, so oh the house sparrows, Yeah, they eat the seeds out of there, so that kind of well, that's not a good marker.

And then the chimpanzees are probably the worst because.

Hang on to your stomachs, gag triggers ahead, they see that pretty green feces that someone just defecated, and then they go eat it and they all eat it, so then everyone has green feces.

So you cannot mark a chimpanzee's feces just because everybody else eats it, and then everybone else's species is marked.

How what did the glitter experiment go? And went pretty well? You know.

Some species, you know how the non toxic glitter has different colors, right, Well, when we fed it to our lions, they basically pooped out silver glitter no matter what color

So side note, of course you can purchase glitter filled capsules, and of course people sell them on Etsy as shitter glitter pills, but according to reviews, you got to take a lot of them. And also some glitter is actually just tiny plastic pieces, so let's just make a pack to not Also, speaking of canines, I'm sorry I had to ask, well, I have a question, what was your dog's poop doing in the lab? Did you was that just tracked in on a shoe or are you comparing?

So like we were studying domestic dogs in and around the Sarrangeti National Park and Tanzania. The domestic dogs are used for service right they help protect the livestock from predation. The problem with domestic dogs also is that they give diseases like canon distemper or rabies to the wildlife, but also rabies to people. And so we started a vaccination campaign to reduce distemper which was affecting the lions, and then reduce rabies, which affects a lot of species, including people.

The horse.

We haven't done horsepoop yet, but we've done horse hair, you know, because I just have it. And if we're just kind of trying to develop the methods in the lab, you just we just need a product, right, we need something to work with. So yeah, so yeah, we used all my animals, So use what you got. Yeah.

Right.

Do you ever have any humans come to you and say, hey, doctor poop, can you see if I'm doing all?

Right? Uh? No, Uh, we don't do We don't do any human service stuff, though it's been accidental where we've tried to develop some controls for our hormone essays and used human urine to do that. And at the time, my technician was pregnant and didn't know it, and you know, wow, we had some progesterone controls there, so that was accidental.

Yeah, you let her know. Oh yeah she found out.

Yeah, she found she was doing it and she found out and she didn't tell anybody because you know, so you had to wait for a wow of course. And then yeah, so what a way to find out? Yeah, what a way to find out?

Yep, just a busy day at the office.

Yeah.

Well, and now you mentioned a little bit about bowling ball rhino oh pooh, which is I'm still boggled by. Does it really come out like a volleyball? It does?

Yes? And then I don't know if you've ever seen a dog do this where they scrape their back legs after they go to the bathroom. Yes, that's a sign of territoriality. They're marking their territory. And rhinos do that. But they purposely step in their feces and then they walk away because that's how they mark their territory. They have these little latrines called middens where they come by, they defecate, they stop in it, they scrape in it, and they walk away.

Rude. Wow, wow, Wow, I don't know what your phone's data plan is but if you get a hot second, feel free to google rhino pooping and you will find we are in good company with hundreds of thousands of people who have also wanted to watch rhinos shitting in their middens, which, by the way, is a word which

So well we're actually we're the rude ones because we put camera traps on the latrains because we wanted to get them in the act, because it's very important. Of course, this is all the all for science is to know when they defecated, how long has that sample been exposed to the environment. And I already told you that bacteria breaking down the hormones is our nemesis, right, we want to stop that from happening, and so so anyway, so.

We put the camera traps.

It cakes picture of the rhinos when they're in action, and then we have also the time and date stamp when that that sample was left so we can study them. So we were studying black rhinos in South Africa. We like rarely ever saw rhinos. They're so elusive and so those elusive poopers are really challenging, and so you can you have to get stealth, and you have to get these camera traps and figure out where to set them.

Now, that's so illegal if it's humans, but if it's rhinos, it's fine. That's right exactly. And when it comes to smells, why are some so distinct, It's because of what they eat.

Yeah, yeah, so I don't know what I'm feeding my one dog, and may also just be the bacteria and they're gut microbes that are causing this smell. But yes, there's definitely related to food and bacteria.

And now when you're doing your lab work. I've seen pictures of you. You're you're swabbing, you're cutting things, You're you're stirring them with what looks like a tiny immersion.

Blenderrect I call it a special test tube blender.

Yes, a homogenizer. A homogenizer is the word. Yes, is the science word for it. But it's really like if you were going.

To froth up like a lot exactly. I tell people that's our field methods. I said, do not use this to make mixed drinks. This is just for feces. Let's keep it separate, Yes, totally VCS only.

How are you running those assets to figure out like what kind of hormones are in there? Like do you have? How do you deal with all the data? I guess that's my question, one day at a time.

It is overwhelming because we we you know, conservation is a crisis science. We are losing species so quickly, and so we all want to work together, we all want to get things done. But it gets overwhelming with all the data. And so you know, here every month we're collecting samples from our zoo animals. When we have questions, we're analyzing them, we're graphing them. We're sending them to the manager so we can work with the managers. I'm helping them manage their animals, and so it's it can

So that helps. That helps having students and staff members too. What's your pure l routine. Do you have a hand sanitizer preference or is it like do you become desensitized like booze pooh. Fine, you have to.

Be careful because there are diseases and feces, parasites, viruses, and so we have to periodically remind people that this is feces and you have to be careful, and so.

We have we have lots of protocols.

You never, even in your office, eat anything that's hit the ground.

There's no five second role around us, for sure.

But yeah, we have a dirty lab and we keep feces in a certain place and it has to be either zip blocked in a bag to be in another place, but or it's in this in the fecal lab. We have these strict rules to make sure that we don't have any contamination, any spread of diseases and stuff. So it's really important actually, because you know, it still is poop though we're pretty desensitized to it.

Do you think that's where the kind of wiring for shame around number two happens because it's easy to be like I gotta go be but you would never be like, I'm gonna go take a dump, like you would never announce that. Like, are there certain animals Does it happen more with primates or social animals that seem more embarrassed about taking a dump?

I don't know about embarrassed, but you know, they're what I call the elusive poopers like cats who.

Bury their feces, right, they hide.

Their feces, unlike you know, some ungulates like deer that may walk and poop at the same time. You know, rhinos have a specific location or they're gonna go They're gonna go to their midden, they're gonna defecate.

Their dogs are just kind of you know, right.

I mean, there might be some personalities that may be a little bit more shy than others, but you know, typically the feces that they're either trying to hide that they're there and so they're going to cover it up, or they're advertising that they're there right, or they don't care.

So you know, it just kind of really depends on the species.

Mm hmm.

Ps. I asked the Internet why humans are ashamed of their own poops and got back everything from our innate desire to avoid parasites. Because even deer and sheep and cows do not graze where they PLoP. To the Bible, so Deuteronomy twenty three to twelve, anyone quote, you must have a place outside the camp to go and relieve yourself, and you must have a digging tool in your equipment so that when you relieve yourself, you can dig a

I would definitely either avoid it or try to bury it or something.

Okay, Yeah, who I was. I got so excited about having raccoon parties, and then I was like, well, that's I don't want a brain parasite.

Yeah, I mean there's there's some there's some reasons why there's human wildlife conflict, right, and then some other things that we should appreciate nature and engage with nature. But you know, we also have to make sure that we stay healthy and the animals stay healthy too.

Right.

So were some of our habits too are bad for them? Like leaving trash out?

Oh for sure. Yeah, we don't want to leave a Vegas style buffet for a raccoon. No exactly. Oh. I wanted to ask, and I asked this copalto ologists. Is there a movie or a TV show that deals with this type of science or who in general that you feel like really gets it right or wrong? How is the poomji? Is the poom oji on points from the eyes?

No? And it depends on the species, right right, Yeah, that's you know, it's more kind of a primate poo than a It's not a ball, it's not it's not olive. It's not a you know, golf ball or a bowling ball or so.

Yeah, that's kind of insular of us to choose a primate pooh. Yes, primates tend to have like the soft served Yeah, chocolate soft serve. Do you have a problem going to self serve yogurut?

I know?

In fact, I make these, uh, these awesome chocolate mint cookies every Christmas.

That are shaped like Pooh, like a little.

Round poof, and you know they come from the you know, Speakle lab, you know, happy Holidays.

I put some.

Powdered sugar on there, so you know, less less like Pooh Pooh, but you know, yeah, yeah, no, I think it's funny.

It's great. Yeah, is it? Is it? Which species is it? Does it most resemble? It's probably more like a camel, okay than anything else. Yeah, this is just like a little ball. It's a golf ball. I have so many questions from listeners that I'm holding off asking some of them because I know listeners want to ask them. So can I ask you Patreon questions? Sure? Okay, good, okay,

Mom, why did I call it Scottish cheese?

It's Cottash cheese, honey. And I'm not sure did.

The dogs in other countries speak different languages? Yeah?

I think so.

Well when we get there.

Well, we've got to fix the car first, but there's someone coming to help us.

Is it the man from Geneva?

Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's the van. Now.

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Okay, let's get to your questions.

Okay, questions from patrons. We got close to three hundred in twenty four hours. People want to know about pooh. Sandra Abate just made a comment and just said, what a shitty subject with a poo emoji and also a tongue out emoji, which is like not a good pair

What?

And Paul Hancock said, how do they make a square? Poop with what I assume is a round bum hoole. Wow.

You know, I actually had no idea that it was square because we don't have a lot of Australian species here.

They shit a brick. Yeah, it's so weird. I think something must have gone viral on the internet like a few months ago, because I did not know that Walt's poop square. Wow, I'll look it up. Yeah, is that crazy?

Yeah?

That is crazy because houch those corners, I know, I know they can't there's no way that they can have a rhombus buttthole.

And it doesn't like form when it hits the ground and be like.

I don't know, I don't know, but I thought people were joshing. I thought they were shitting me, but apparently they're not. Of course, I'm going to have your backside with an explanation here. And this is a pretty new finding. So in the fifty million years that wombat have been waddling around the planet, these large potato shaped marsupials have shit mysteries until November twenty eighteen, when Georgia Tech scientist doctor Patricia Yang, a fellow scatologist lead authored on a

What is life?

Also colorI let's talk about it. Stircle Billin is what browns it down, and it's the product of metabolized blood and bile. So more pale, floaty and quote offending stool might mean higher fat concentration and faster transit time. It may indicate a pancreatic issue, y'all, and super dark and or bloody could be signs of internal bleeding or a tumor.

Well, first of all, cat poo is really stinky, and there are you know, pretty much they're supposed to be straight carnivores, right, yeah, and so they I mean, it's all it's all about what they're eating, right, So it smells so good, so you know, to.

Their dog, of course, I think it's just I think it's just odor.

And then you know, dogs maybe like to be a little bad sometimes, But there is some evolutionary history to feces eating, especially with a female a bitch with her litter, because they they want to conceal their litter, so they'll actually eat the feces. And then when before the pups can really do anything on their own, they lick their heine right to cause them to urinate and defecate, and

At least you a history of it. So it's to conceal there they're dead, and then other patrons have the question and I will list their names later. Okay, now is later and first time question askers Kyle Wilkinson and Ashley Curtin and Elliot Warden want to know why do some species of animal eat their own like twice, like lagomorphs like rabbits, and certain animals are like, let's have that it ag.

Yeah, So rabbits have two types of feces they have. They defecate out vitamins and minerals, and so they had to actually eat that in order to absorb it. I'm not sure if they have to. I don't know the whole biology behind them. If they have to actually like their body has to break it down a little bit before they can actually ingest it, so they have to eat.

They have to eat it. Then then they have another kind of defication, which is like the waste product. Man. I wonder if they're excited because they are their own vending machine, or if they're like Why do we have to eat our own shit? Why no one else has to eat their own shit other than some of us, Like, I.

Wonder this good thing? We're so cute. I mean, you know, I don't know why why that would be. And except for their digestive system maybe is not as efficient or you know, able to absorb some of those nutrients.

Yeah, so they have to you know, eat it, yeah boop leftovers. Yeah, you know, my mom calls leftovers French cooking. She calls it deja vous. They're growing French tonight, so I guess they just have a lot of leftovers. Yes. Wow, this episode learn a lot of folks, such as the

Definitely, my I can tell which dog left the pile. There is definitely an odor difference. But yeah, again it's it's it's about the microbes and the gut and what they're eating for sure. Mmm.

God, I hope no one ever makes a cat poop candle. God, do not want never anyone.

That's the reason why they bury it, right, yeah, amad?

First time question asker wants to know how full of poop are we exactly at any given point in time? Do you think, wow, how much poop.

Is in us?

I just think about those colonoscopes and how much liquid you have to actually drink to clear it out.

I mean that's a lot.

Yeah, I can't remember how long the intestence is, like one hundred and twenty feet or something ridiculous. And so if you're not eating a lot of table you know they could be in there for a while, I think, so, Yeah.

Isn't it crazy to think whenever you're just like sitting in a get a party, that there's a ton of pooh there? But it's just in bodies.

I just I try not to think about it, especially you know, on the airplane when you're all stuck.

Oh, yeah, I was on an airplane this morning. Yes, oh, thought about that. Mm hmm ps. I look this up, and for every one hundred pounds of body weight, you make about a half pound of solid waste a day. But I saw one Reddit post, I mean, let's be honest. I looked for one from a guy who, per doctor's orders, was taking a pre colonoscopede what he called military grade laxative, and though fully hydrated, he says he offloaded eight.

Pounds of cargo.

Now.

This next question was also asked by Jennifer Tran. A few people had questions, including Karen Elliott, about civet pooh coffee, like what happens in seeds and when coffee beans have to pass through? Right?

So, some seeds I guess they have I don't know much, but they have like the outer coating that has to be broken down, and so I guess the digestive system of some of these species. It's really necessary for a lot of plants actually to have their seeds ingested and then defecated, so it sort of breaks apart the outside to help them germanate.

Oh, and then question about a lot of people had questions about positioning. Monica Schneider said, I've heard that squatting is the optimal position for our digestive system. I'm picturing my dog. How did toilets evolve to be so upright?

Or?

Mainly like, should should we as primates? Should we be squatting more?

It's the cultural thing, I think, because you go to Africa and you're squatting, you know, it's a porcelain squatter. I mean, you know you're squatting, you know. And so I've heard that you're supposed to squat Do.

Other primates, chimpanzees, apes are the squatting? Yeah, they're squatting. Yah, yep, They're definitely not sitting on a ceramic bowl reading a phone. Oh, sid got Pujart wants to know does any animal have nice smelling poop? Actually?

Yes, yeah, the giant panda has poo that smells like tea.

They're eating bamboo.

It literally smells like tea when you know, here we were, we freeze dry poop sometimes, and some lucky scientists was freezes drying his giant panda poo while I was freeze driving my fishing cat poo. So yes, uh, giant panda smells like tea.

Ah did that change your relationship to tea?

Uh? No, But I really kind of despise the giant pandaf you know, all these things, certain things about them, even though they'd been very successful program right, they dropped there in danger species status and stuff. So but yeah, it's just like one more thing where you know, giant pana got a lot of funding because of the way they look and their icon for a while ife conservation, and then something like a fishing cat or a blackfooted ferret, which is you know, smaller and less known, you tend

I love it. Fann has got haters, makes sense? This is gonna be broadcasted. No, no, it's hilarious. Vin Retti wants to know. And several people ask this question the Bristol stool scale. Have you heard of it? Where it's like I guess certain consistencies. Yes. This was also asked by Hailey Temple, who called the Bristol stool scale the best thing in the universe. And well, that might be

None of my business.

But it features types one through seven interdly. So number one is separate hard lumps like nuts, two is sausage shaped, but lumpy four is snakelike. We've also got some soft blobs, some fluff, and finally number seven entirely liquid. Oh. Yes, the Bristol Scale. So who was this genius doctor Bristol. Well, sadly he exists only in our minds, brown eye. This iconic piece of medical communication was the brainchild of doctors Stephen Lewis and Ken Heaton, who drew it up at

Well, it depends on the animal what their their normal texture should be, right, and then yes, any kind of variation from that, you know, is it dietary?

Is it illness? It's definitely an indicator of health.

M hm.

Do other species look at their chuck out their poops?

Well there, but right, so the rhinos are coming in and check out everybody's poop in particular. Yeah, no, they're all interested. And then you know, the chimpanzees are coming to check it out, and so they're eating what's in it? Don't ever put corn in there?

Oh, actually, I'm glad you mentioned it. Definitely had a corn question or two. Casey new Haven wants to know what's up with corn and why don't we properly digest it? And uh so another person had the same question, which is hilarious.

I'll find them.

Yeah, a lot of a lot of species.

I don't know if it's just like the fiber the cellular nature of corn that makes it not as digestible without being processed, but we use it to mark a lot of feces. Not a lot of animals can digest corn.

So really yeah, Melissa Cross had that question too. So it's so if you see kernels, there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you at all. Maybe Yeah. Alison Hughes wants to know what is up with fecal transplants. Is this just a fad in humans or humans getting these? Where are other animals getting these done too? Like do other animals eat others poop to get the microbiome?

So I think this actually came from the cattle industry. Oh, because they have what do you call a fiscalated cows and it's actually.

Like a porthole.

So they've sewn on the cow because the rooman bumps up right to the body wall and you can do a surgery and then you have a hole right into the rooman pus.

The rouman is the first of four stomach chambers and ruminants and in cows. Are you ready for this? It can hold up to forty gallons of sloshy chewed up grass that ferments like your roommate's kombucha experiment, and it vets. Schools like you see Davis and Rachel's alma mater, Clemson, they'll often have cows with an open porthole in its belly into which you can insert a gloved arm.

They make you make the cow swallow a pill, and you have to catch it as it comes into the room. And that's just so you're reaching in there with all the room and fluid is churning. I mean, it's like squeezing, you know. That's they I have to digest their their the forage that way, and so it's like coming out in your hair and you're like oh, you're like ah, reaching because you can get an a if you catch

But they're learning so much.

This is not my science, but micro microbial ecology and the relationship between our health, our even our stress responses with these gut microbes. It is really important and they're learning all this information. I mean, I think it's really valuable. It's not just a fad. It's something that we're going to learn more and more about because we're learning how these microbes control a lot of our responses.

See the microbiology episode with UCLA professor doctor Elaine Shaw, who is a leader in studying how our guts at butts affect our brains. Yeah, and do you find that studying cortisol and studying stress hormones in animals, do you ever find yourself relating that at all to your stress response or if you're looking sort of like how certain animals might be stressed when they're lonely or when they're changed.

Habitats, or Yeah, we look at that because we want to make sure we minimize stress, and we look at what I found is transportation is one of the highest stressors.

Maybe you can relate to that today. Literally have been on a plane all day, like got it at three in the morning to catch a flight in the snow. Oh god. And so it's very stressful.

Even like you know, we have the Brookvalds real close to us, and it's like less than twenty miles away, but of course there's Chicago traffic. But even coming from that short distance is a stressor, and so we learn about when animals are particularly stressed during this process. Because we have to bring in new individuals, we have to share them between zoos in order to maintain the genetic health of these species.

And you mentioned that you live in Indiana, sixty miles from the Chicago Zoo. Do you ever think about that during your.

Community It's like, it's like my time by myself because when I get home, the dogs want me, the ponies want me, the cat, well, the cat, yes, no, the cat does want me to and my six year old son wants attention. They all want attention. They all want food and they all want it now. And so like I'm go, go go. So the hour and a half I spend in.

The car, it's actually calming.

Yeah, that is like my my alone time. And so I knew what I was getting into when I moved that far. But you know, if you want to have your ponies in the backyard, you have to live so far away from the city.

So yeah, I think it's great that you have a balance at both. My job, you know, is you get more and more advanced in your career, you tend to.

Get more further away from like what you loved about it in the beginning, you know, like I love working the lab, I love working with the animals, and so to get my animal fixed, I get it.

At home, even if it's just shovelling poop, which I do a lot of. This next one was asked by Isabel Bie Holper and Wing Christina Weaver Joe Weinhoffer, like, why do animals have such different shapes? Why do rabbits poop pebbles? And huh and others are bigger ones, Like what's going on there?

Oh?

You know, I've been asked that question before.

I sho should have looked it up at Yeah, they all have their different shapes, and like I said, we even individuals have their own special kind of shapes, you know, like horses kind of have the kidney bean shape, and then there's pellets and it must be related to their diet. They cause thems to do that and the passage rate through the gut system.

Yeah, it's so funny. If you ever see a like a goat shit, it's just like a sock full of pebbles being inside out.

Yeah what Yeah, and it is drop it and they keep going and like not even like anything happened, and no one else thinks anything happens, I know, just not a big deal at all.

Okay, I look this up and one theory of pebble poos is that the more likely an animal is to be prey, the more risky it is to go take a drink of water, and the more water their body wants to conserve, producing number two's that are number ones on the Bristol stool scale. Separate heart lumps like nuts?

Is that nuts?

Okay? Laura Springer wants to know what is the coolest or most fascinating thing you've ever found out about an animal from looking at its poop? Any just bananas, discoveries that you've made that really surprised you.

A lot of times, particularly what's our our animals here at the zoo like our like our hairy sechwan talkin it's a giant goat like species from Asia. And you know, it's very hard to tell when they're pregnant, you know, and so like I am like the first one to know, you know, at the zoo when animals are pregnant, that is the coolest thing.

We're like a doctor's office.

We're all like hush hush, And even when people have like no clue, and I, of course immediately tell them because you know, when you know we're pregnant, and animals a pregnant, you can't give them certain medications and stuff, so they need to know, you know, immediately that this is this is what happens.

So it's often that we are learning things.

That no one else has learned before, and that that keeps your job exciting and fresh and willing to work with pooh every.

Day for aquatic animals and amphibians. Rachel also has pioneered ways of measuring hormones with skin secretion samples, which she calls frog swabs, and she says that's much easier than hanging on to a toad waiting for it to unload on you. I've seen a video of a toad drop in a log and wow, poop is pretty big, giant.

Yeah, but the problem is they don't do it often enough, or sometimes for us, they're doing it in the water, and so then I'm just like.

Yeah, who knows what's in there?

Yeah?

Well, speaking of water, Heather Dunsmore wants to know when we're in the ocean or a lake, are we just swimming in a bunch of fish poop DoD dogs.

Yes, they definitely poop in the water, so you are swimming with poop, but it's hopefully diluted out and then it becomes like sediment and drops.

To the ground. That's called marine snow.

After a while, it mayce kind of swirl around a little bit, so you know, don't swallow water. But then it's actually going to go to the bottom, and then other things are going to eat it.

It's just dinner, sir. Yeah, it's a food cycle, right, you know, it's just like lunch confetti. Yeah, it's just like your dog's eating other pooh. Have you seen any of those videos of whales pooping? Yes, oh boy, yes.

And actually we published a poop picture at our latest paper.

On sea otters because seaatters do the same thing.

It's like a bloom of a poop, and so like, how can you study the stress of a sea otter?

You know, it's really difficult. This professional published academic paper about using whisker and hair and blood samples from ottersus A full color photo of a Monterey Bay Aquarium otter just kind of chilling, looking like a stoned guy in an oceanic jacuzzi. But if you look closely, with the discerning scientific eye of a scatologist, you will notice a yellowish cloud off to it's right. Again, this photo appears in doctor Poop's published paper.

Yeah, but we totally have a poop picture latest. I mean, like, how cool is that? I mean, who who gets to do that anymore? You know, putting a poop picture in the in their publications.

Not a lot of not enough people, not enough people could grease the wheels with a little ship.

Well, we had to get her point across. It's very hard to get fezis from sea otters.

So here you go. You're like, this is why we're tapping on our veins. We have to Yeah, last questions, I always ask uh shittiest thing about your job? This is a question I ask of everyone, but for you, I actually do mean it, like, what is the hardest or most annoying or irk something? What's one thing about your job that just sucks.

Besides the saliva pipetting, like stringing from one tube to another. I mean, I think that the challenging thing is trying to do our science not invasively, you know, because we want to understand stressed physiology and you can't obviously stress them out for that, and so that's why you develop all these different tools to their stressed physiology. So so that is very challenging. And then finding funding for these lesser known species that really need the attention, you know, like.

The blackfoot affair.

We you know, they really we have six to seven hundred left in the world, you know, So you know, some of that is very challenging. When you know you have the giant panda gets like lots of money, you know.

So I know you feel like Winnie the Pooh in a Halloween costume versus a weasel. Yes, exactly, not easy. Yeah, is it heard of weasel? Yes? Okay, I got to do I need a weasel. It's a weasel family. Yeah, okay, would that be a must electologist? What would that be? Yeah, I guess we got a fine one. Anyone holler hook me up with a weasel person. Yeah, yeah, I want to learn about weasels. But yeah, so it's getting funding. I hear from a lot of scientists it's not their

Yeah, because we're a nonprofit, we're a free zoo, and so we have to get creative and where our funding comes from.

Yeah, I mean I didn't realize that you guys were a free zoo, yes, Dame, so, yes, you got to make it up other ways. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah. And then what do you love about your job as a FECs researcher the most, the most job.

It's really it's really that I can say I'm making a difference. We're making a difference with conserving wildlife, whether it's you know, small amphibians that don't get a lot

And you know here we've produced.

Too in the last I don't know, I'm going to say since twenty thirteen. And that is really cool and I was part of that, and it was it was really rewarding to see.

Those and so feeling like being a poop detective, lets you have a little bit more context for what the animals are going through, what's best for them?

Yeah, yeah, you know, because you can look at them, but you don't necessarily know what's going on inside. And that is you know, my skill, you know, poop detective. So yeah, and that's what's great about physiology. You can really understand how animals are responding to environment.

Wow, so our hearts aren't on our sleeves, they're in our poo. That's right, toilet. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you so much for all the hard and not always great smelling work that you do. It's my pleasure. So ask smart people crappy questions and you're going to learn so much about yourself and others.

Maybe too much.

Now, Doctor Rachel Santamier is at Lincoln Park Zoo and you can follow them at Lincoln Park Zoo. We are at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both, so do come be our friends. Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert for managing

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