In the animal world the strongest individual survives. From time immemorial, this rule is confirmed by examples from life. It is enough to recall the history of mankind. At first glance, the weak and defenseless primates managed to evolve and conquer the whole world, becoming the largest population of intelligent animals. Nature did not endow them with impressive external data, so they used other available methods to preserve their appearance. Absolutely everything went into the process, right up to the discharge of one's own body.
What is excrement?
Excrement is a discharge of the colon that goes through the anus and consists of food processed by the body.
It would seem that these are ordinary waste products of the body, not bearing any significant benefits. But animals and people for the sake of their own survival learned to use even such, at first glance, useless things. This proves that the world will still know what excrement is and what they are capable of.
What do people do with waste
Medicine has not always been as advanced as it was in the twenty-first century. Most often, in order not to expose themselves to unnecessary danger from inexperienced doctors, people preferred to be treated with the help of herbs, plants, minerals and waste products of a living organism. The range of application of such techniques was quite wide: from diseases of the reproductive system to divine practices.
Over time, a breakthrough in medicine was made, and doctors learned to do what was previously considered a miracle. But even at the present time, some of the old techniques are used. For example, with severe diarrhea, which is accompanied by fever and blood stool, doctors using a special tube add excrement of a healthy person to the diseased intestine. The meaning of this procedure is that strong bacteria of “healthy” feces help to overcome diseased cells, contributing to a speedy recovery.
In human society, precious metals have not lost their popularity for a long time. The main sources of their extraction are underground caves. However, researchers found one curious fact: human excrement is an equally rich source of metals. It was even estimated that at least 13 million dollars worth of jewelry could be extracted from the waste of 1 million people.
A more popular way of using excrement is to fertilize farmers and crops. Few people know that for this purpose not only animal waste is used, but also human feces.
Humans are the only creatures who engage in sexual intercourse, not only to conceive offspring, but simply for the sake of pleasure. To achieve the desired level of arousal, much is used, including regular excrement. In medicine, this phenomenon is called coprophilia.
The petrified excrement of human ancestors represents a wide field for scientists to study the life of ancient people. Using special devices, you can extract DNA from petrified feces and study the information encrypted in it about the health status of a particular individual and its lifestyle.
Coprophagy - eating excrement for a specific purpose. Some animals eat the intestinal waste of other individuals to compensate for the lack of protein and minerals. But not only representatives of the fauna are interested in this, but also people. The most expensive varieties of coffee are made from coffee beans that have gone through the entire digestive tract of a particular animal.
People even use their own excrement in order to kill a person they hate. Military practice has provided the world with many techniques that talk about how to make weapons from intestinal secretions. All their killer power lies in the fact that getting into the blood, they cause infection and, accordingly, a slow and painful death.
One of the most famous organizations in the world is NASA. She supervises the study of outer space, prepares researchers and is engaged in developments designed to improve interplanetary flights. Recently there they thought about what human excrement is. Scientists of this organization began to work in a direction that involves the processing and subsequent use of human feces. Already learned to extract water from the urine of astronauts and to let it in reuse. Feces have not yet been used, so they are launched towards the earth, they burn up, reaching the atmosphere. But NASA plans include the ability to process human excrement, make food and fuel from them, which can significantly save on space flights.
What do animals do with them
Penguins live on the territory where severe frosts and cold prevail. Together with predators, this fact poses a serious threat to the population of these animals. But penguins, as intelligent creatures, have developed their own survival strategies.
One of them is the tendency to gather in huge flocks when the females begin to lay their eggs. Predators are not able to eat all animals at once, which gives additional chances to survive for more successful penguins. Another strategy is that many birds living in the same area produce a huge amount of excrement. Animal waste has a dark color that attracts sunlight, helping melt snow faster in this place. If penguins live in a limited area most of the time, then they begin to defecate so that the waste flies away from the nesting sites. This helps not to pollute the chicks' place of residence more than necessary.
Hippos are considered dangerous animals in Africa, not only because of their awesome appearance. The intestines of the male hippopotamus are designed in such a way that, if desired, the host is able to start the process of spraying excreted excrement. They can fly a distance of up to 2 meters in all directions! Animal excrement shows the boundaries of their territory of residence.
Koalas went even further. Their cubs are not able to digest the food that adult animals eat. And milk alone is not enough for the full development of a growing organism. Therefore, mothers feed young individuals with their own excrement. They contain all the vitamins and minerals that are not enough for the baby.
Many hills and simply relief areas have mastered wombats. In order to mark the boundaries of such a difficult-to-treat area, their body acquired an interesting feature - they defecate in cubes. Waste from the vital activity of these animals does not slip, remaining in one place, and signaling to the rest of the individuals about the presence of the owner of the given area. Their excrement has a pungent and unpleasant odor, which, in combination with poor eyesight, hints at the possibility of their communication using intestinal secretions.
Vultures do not know how to sweat, but at the same time live in areas where the ambient temperature reaches impressive levels. How is this possible? The whole secret is that these birds defecate on their own paws. Vapors of excrement help cool the body of the vulture, protecting it from overheating. In the composition of these secretions there are bacteria that, due to their lethality, neutralize the properties of rotting carrion. Therefore, vultures can eat meat from which other animals would have died long ago.
Sloths deserve special attention. They are so slow and lethargic that a lot of bugs, spiders and insects start in their wool. Among them there is a kind of moth that does not live anywhere in the world, except for the wool of these animals. But in order to complete its cycle and lay eggs, moths need a safe place outside the sloth’s body, where all the necessary nutrients will be. Scientists suggest that because of this, nature made sloths go down to the ground once a week to empty their intestines, and bury the waste in a safe place. During this process, an impressive amount of these animals die from the teeth of predators. But the final goal is achieved - the life cycle of the moth is completed. Without even understanding what excrement is, these representatives of the animal world make up an amazing symbiosis.
Manure as a separate type of excrement
Manure is the excrement of cattle mixed with food and straw bedding. It is used to fertilize the soil in order to increase the future crop yield.
Most often, cow tortillas are used as manure. But if desired, they can be replaced with excrement of horses, pigs, rabbits and chickens. In their composition, they are not much different from cow cakes, therefore, they help to achieve similar results.