More about Poop, the Book

As I was saying in my last blog, I went to the library book sale. One of the books that caught my eye was titled; Poop A natural History of the Unmentionable by Nicola Davies. Illustrated by Neal Layton. I thought perhaps it would be about potty training. Not even close. It is a small book,61 pages. The illustrations are great and key to the books definitions of the topic. It is purely scientific in its approach, yet very easy for a youngster to understand. Even at that it can be hysterically funny at times. I learned more in a half hour reading it than I have absorbed into my grey matter in weeks. It starts out by saying how grownups are shy about it; Horses ignore it; And babies do it in their diapers. Poop, big jobs, number two. Whatever you call it it is still feces and the process of doing it is defecating. The book goes on to describe size, texture and smell and no two are alike, there are many kinds. Each kind from all different species can serve a separate purpose. This is the part that I found so interesting. People now days have social media to keep in touch with one another and to see what the rest of the population is up to. Animals on the other hand just sniff poop. Badgers have latrines where they poop. They do this to let others know to "keep out". Male hippos like to spread their message around. They quickly waggle their tails as they defecate, spraying poop and its message everywhere. Did you know wild pigs from the South American jungle are called a Peccaries and they live in big gangs? They also have latrines near or in the middle of their territories. It is like a big old bulletin board. When one goes into poop, it sniffs what has been left behind by others. From this the peccary can tell who is pregnant, who would like to be, who is new to the area and who is boss. Hippo's find their way by the scent of poop. The book talks about dung beetles and Bats. In Texas, Bracken Cave has so many bats living in it, about 20 million, they drop fifty tons of poop a day in the cave. A dung beetle or coprophagous. Now you have to use your imagination on this. Lets say a full grown elephant drops a rather large flopper. Within two hours a horde, about 16,000 dung beetles can arrive and devour the whole mess. Yep its gone! The book will tell you who's is the biggest, smallest and who doesn't go at all. It amazed me how the different species have their own way of dealing with the outcome of their eating. There is a type of bird that after it feeds it's young in the nest, the baby goes to the edge of the nest turns and goes over the edge of the nest and it comes out in a sort of bag that the parent then carries off. There is some facts about rabbits I did not know and after finding out was just dumbfounded. If your library does not have this book I suggest you try and find it somewhere. If you have a 9 or 10 year old that has to do a science project this would be a doozy. Not to mention they would probably love doing it. I don't know about you but I have decided to stick to Face Book for my social information. Pleasant dreams all, and remember, One Day @ A Time.