Being a fake medical expert has become a bit passe, frankly. And that expertise came after my rarely discussed time as environmental science expertise honed as a lowly paralegal/legislative & regulatory assistant/lobbyist.
So I figure I’m ready for a new challenge. And just in time for World IBD Day, I’m takin’ on physics!
The Physics of Poop, of course. And I think you will agree that I do have the expertise. And the, ummm, credentials. And I don’t have to go far for sample collection.
You see, there’s an article I read. (Of course there’s an article.)
The Physics of Poop
You know it’s a good article, because this is the photo that accompanies the article:
This critter has nothin’ on me. Except maybe on my shoes Credit: Barry Kusama Getty Images
The authors, David Hu and Patricia Yang, studied poop every which way but Sunday. Well, maybe Sunday, too. Because there are some chores that simply must be done 7 days a week.
They discovered that herbivores produced “floaters” and carnivores plopped “sinkers.” And apparently “stinkers” too, as tigers apparently have the stinkiest poop and panda poop is positively precious.
Bigger animals, not surprisingly, are more prodigious poopers, but interestingly, the speed of poop production is similar regardless of the size of the animal:
Assuming a bell curve distribution, 66 percent of animals take between 5 and 19 seconds to defecate. It’s a surprisingly small range, given that elephant feces have a volume of 20 liters, nearly a thousand times more than a dog’s, at 10 milliliters.
In all honesty, the attraction of the article wasn’t the significant increase in my already vast knowledge and understanding of poop.
Nope. There were two reasons.
First, it’s the fact that this article alerted me to the existence of NASA’s
Space Poop Challenge
I think you will admit that I should be an automatic contender.
More importantly, this article gave me something to write about to celebrate World IBD Day. And while I personally celebrate every day, you, personally can have fun with poop on World IBD Day. Don’t say I never gave you anything.
***
But WAIT! There’s MORE! After this post went to press, I found this article.
When Birds of a Feather Poop Together
Golly. Studying poop has become a 24/7 commitment for me.
You’re welcome.
FiftyFourandAHalf 
This was definitely worth coming back to read (as I try to get myself back in the swing.) Such a great PSA from the Poop Queen.
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With your background in science and dealing with me, Frank, you’re a shoe-in for the Space Poop Challenge. Step right in …
And welcome back. I’ve been out of the loop mostly, but it’s always nice to see you.
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Plus, I enjoy a good dump on the throne.
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PS: I told myself that before I return to posting, I must first return to visiting!
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Fascinating, even for those of us who generally find such topics less than fascinating. 🙂
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What? Poop isn’t fascinating?
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hehehe this was a moving and insightful tribute to the back half of our digestive tract. Ummmm do you say “Happy” World IBD day?
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That’s exactly what I said to my Crohn’s Facebook group. And you’re supposed to wear purple to commemorate it; brown seems so much more appropriate. 💩
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Someone needs to ask what Sean Spicer does with all his shit. Get an expert opinion.
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💩😂
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I’ve always wanted to know the ends and outs of poop and now that I have learned what I’d been hankering to know, I just found out that it’s really shitty. Or, maybe I should write crappy or doo-doo or feces or excrement.
Oh what the heck, it’s a goof karma thing. 🙂
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Goof karma right back at you and all that shit.
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Thank GOD you haven’t changed because of that last medical report! – Marty
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😂😂😂😂
I promise, I will always be full of, umm, it.
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You’ve just enhanced my poo knowledge. And made me smile. 🙂
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A shit-eating grin, perhaps? 😏
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Ha!
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Wish I’d said that.
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Love your public service announcements!
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I aim to please.
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It’s always nice to have a hobby. And to share. Thank you.
Speaking of bird poo – and hobbies – I’m a mineral collector.
Did you know: there is a cave in New South Wales, Australia. Bats used to live in the cave. Had done so for a long, long time and the poo piles were very, very big. The environmental conditions were just right for mineral crystals to form. Neat, eh? The poop piles and the crystals are gone now because when they were discovered, back in the late 1880’s, people scraped up every last morsel to use as fertilizer.
Google Newberyite if you are curious.
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Guano? I do know of the benefits of guano, but I never heard of mineralized poop. My hat is off to you. I’ll keep my knickers on, though, if you don’t mind.
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Wow, here’s my chance to make a shitload of money, figuring out how to dump a payload of shit into space. But I wonder if they’ll have to track all that shit floating in space. Could it badly damage a spacecraft if it ran into a pile of shit at 100,000 miles an hour? So many complications . . .
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Let’s hope they have a ready supply of windshield washer fluid. 🙂
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Can’t they just use urine? It is sterile …
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Perhaps you can design something that will attach it to the hull, so that it burns up upon reentry. Or perhaps something resembling kitty litter that is absorbed intot he lining of the space suit…
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These all sound like excellent ideas to me. Or maybe they can design a way to jetison the poop out of the spacecraft and propel it into one central area of space. Eventually, all the astronaut poop would congeal together there, forming a poop-moon of sorts, which would revolve around the earth and serve as our second moon.
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I think that will work great, Tippy. We can use it as our prison moon. We can call it Endour.
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Good. Well, let’s call NASA and present our ideas.
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Always educational and entertaining. It is seriously something to think about.
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Especially since we are destroying our own planet. We’re all gonna need these gadgets. Some (like me) more than others.
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Ok, let’s be honest here, animals take less than 20 seconds to defecate only because they don’t have smartphones,
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Or thumbs. Imagine how annoying it would be to have a phone and not be able to open it with a thumbprint.
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You don’t actually need thumbs (and at least some primates already have them), as long as you can hold the phone somehow in a paw or on the ground and swipe with another paw or leg or beak or trunk. Of course, if they’re going to use beaks, or hooves, or non-retractable claws, they going to need a lot of screen protectors.
And I don’t think animals would ever lock their phones or need a thumb to unlock it – they defecate in public so I figure they don’t really care about privacy.
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My dog is exceptionally concerned about my privacy. Or am I thinking it’s my privates. One of the two…
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Oh my, now I am imagining a vacuum-hose diaper for astronauts. When they have to go, they hook up to an access port that will suck their waste out into the vacuum of space. My lack of physics knowledge suggests I am not the right person for the project. I have a sneaking suspicion the astronaut would just be sucked out the tiny vent due to the force of suction involved. I just wish I were brave enough to ask a scientist.
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As a new fake physicist, I believe your idea has merit. I think that the astronauts would need a wee bit of dulco-lax to ease the process, though. Or so I imagine..
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Maybe we could market such a product? Call it: “Vacuu-lax!”
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It would make colonoscopies soooo much easier!
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No one makes me enjoy poop the way you do. Always, a good time. I think you should work on the space poop challenge. I’m sure you will be a contender.
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My only idea would be to make the seat look like an outhouse …
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Ummm… thank you?
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