Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Eat Shit

HF and me are back in Central Catchment for the same reason, the banded leaf monkeys. Pity we didn’t manage to see them again though, even after sitting and waiting for a few hours. Instead we had a bunch of buzzing companions beside us…

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Some things can be tasty for others even though not seemingly so for us. We found two blowflies gorging head first into the faecal matter together with a pool of their smaller cousins.

Coprophagy is the term for the the consumption of faeces. Besides flies, many other animals are also known to eat shit. Rabbits consume their partially digested vegetative diet to extract more nutrients. Juvenile elephants and hippos eat the faeces of their mothers to inherit good intestinal bacteria. Lizards, rats,hamsters, beetles and dogs are also known to do that. Perhaps we humans are actually the odd one out? ^^

1 comment:

SD said...

Humans do actually practice coprophagy as well. Camel dung apparently treats dysentry. Kopi Luwak is coffee made from civet scat containing coffee beans.

However, in most mammals coprophagy is extremely rare (even in gorillas) and in zoos or pets, especially adult animals, coprophagy can indicate a stress-related disorder.

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