Most people reluctantly pick up their pet’s poop for the sake of the general good.
But Dr. Romane Cristescu, a self-proclaimed evangelist of poop science, delights in the discovery of fresh animal droppings.
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He says the clues that wildlife leaves behind can help researchers find out more about evasive creatures.
“Many times we end up looking for signs of them, and often that’s in the poop or poop,” he tells ABC RN Counterpoint.
Dr. Cristescu is a researcher in ecology at the University of the Sunshine Coast, who studies koalas by observing their fecal matter.
He says “poop and vomit” can reveal important information about an animal’s health and diet by identifying the genetic material present.
Dr. Romane Cristescu trained as a veterinarian in France before moving to Australia to work as an ecologist. (Supplied)
The animals also use poop as their own messaging system, he adds.
“Basically, they smell like rubbish that says ‘I’m male or female and ready to raise.’ Or ‘I’m an older child, don’t come near me,'” says Dr. Cristescu.
While most animals defecate within their immediate environment to mark their territory, other animals, such as the hippopotamus, take a more dispersed approach.
“A hippopotamus, while pooping, has its tail going like a helicopter and [they] you will just spread the manure everywhere, up to 10 meters apparently, ”he says.
The dirty things animals do
Hoping to encourage younger people to take an interest in science, Dr. Cristescu has teamed up with author Nic Gill to write a children’s book called Poo, Spew and Other Gross Things Animals Do.
In their research, they found that animals sometimes have fun ways to protect themselves.
An unsuspecting diver discovered it in the most difficult way.
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Dr. Cristescu tells the story of Keri Wilk, who was diving off the coast of Dominica in the Caribbean in 2015 when he saw a sperm whale.
“[Mr Wilk] it approached a whale and the whale began to defecate a huge amount … it turned on itself quite quickly until that poop covered the whole area and made it disappear, ”he says.
“Unfortunately, back then, the diver, instead of being in a beautiful clear, pristine blue ocean, was now in a sea poop.”
When he later spoke to the BBC, Wilk said he thought the “poo-nado” of the whale was a kind of defense mechanism.
The spider that drops birds is able to avoid its predator resembling its poop. (Flickr: Jean and Fred Hort)
Self-defense is also behind the evolution of some peculiar characteristics of members of the animal kingdom.
Take for example the falling spider birds. According to Dr. Cristescu, it uses the power of poop to prevent its predators.
“It looks pretty unattractive … that name says it all,” he says, explaining that it has evolved in this way to evade predators.
“He spends a lot of time on his network waiting for food to arrive, but in the meantime [it’s] open to predators. [So] the more it looked like poop, the more chances it has of survival, ”he explains.
Strange mating rituals
Adult locust females have an unusual way of attracting a mate. (Provided by: IMAS)
Animals can also do pretty weird things when they try to find a mate or when they take care of their young.
For Dr. Cristescu, locust mating rituals are a good example. When the female locust seeks to mate, it has a strange way of attracting a mate.
“His way of doing this, which is pretty unusual, is biting into the male’s head because in his little one there are all these communication keys,” he says.
“But because the bladder is located under his brain, it comes out of his face.”
It’s a fun thing to watch, says Dr. Cristescu.
Then there are the chicks of the Eurasian coiled bird that, when threatened, spill out an orange liquid with an unpleasant odor.
“They found that if they just vomit on themselves, they don’t smell very good and the predator is unlikely to eat them,” Dr. Cristescu says.
This not only deters the predator, but also warns the parents of the birds.
“It’s a pretty smart thing, because when you’re a bird, you can’t do much,” says the environmentalist.
“We believe the vomit is used as an emergency beacon to warn parents that there is a threat around.”
‘Favorite on the dirty front’
Animal author and researcher Nic Gill has trained his dog Zorro to find the owl’s sputum, also known as scrap pellets. (Provided by: CSIRO)
According to Ms. Gill, the most creepy behavior he observed among the animals he has investigated was that of the naked mole rat.
“They look like a nasty sausage with yellow fangs,” he says.
These bald-looking mammals live in underground tunnel systems in Africa and are rarely seen above ground.
Each colony has a “big fat queen” that can grow up to twice the size of other naked mole rats.
Because they are virtually blind, naked mole rats depend on their sense of smell to identify other members of their colony. (Flickr: Smithsonians National Zoo.)
“They also have a public bathroom, where they’re going to poop, which sounds very hygienic until you find out what they’re really doing there,” Ms. Gill says.
“Everyone is going to shoot in the shared latrine room so they all smell the same. [This is] because from time to time another colony will accidentally cross and end up joining their networks of tunnels.
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“And if they come across someone who smells different to them, they go to war with each other with those nasty yellow fangs,” he explains.
Sometimes naked mole rats eat their own poop. It is something that rabbits and many other herbivores will do, as it allows them to get the most out of it.
But, in the last dirty act, the queen mole recruits her nannies by giving them her poop.
“[The queen] she has a lot of babies, but since she’s the queen, she says I’m not taking care of them, ”she says.
“So he feeds his maids with his own poop and basically washes their brains out so they can become full-time nannies.
Ms. Gill explains that this is because there are hormones in the feces that cause the other naked mole rats to care for the royal babies as if they were their own.
“[Naked mole rats] they are my absolute favorites on the dirty front … they are very weird, ”he says.
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