Feces

Feces are discharged through the anus or cloaca during defecation. This process requires pressures that may reach 100 millimetres of mercury (3.9 inHg) (13.3 kPa) in humans and 450 millimetres of mercury (18 inHg) (60 kPa) in penguins.[6][7] The forces required to expel the feces is generated through muscular contractions and a build-up of gases inside the gut, prompting the sphincter to relieve the pressure and to release the feces.[7]

The feces of animals, e.g. guano and manure often are used as fertilizer.[12]

Dry animal dung, such as that of camel, bison and cattle, is burned as fuel many countries.[13]

Animals such as the giant panda[14] and zebra[15] possess gut bacteria capable of producing biofuel. The bacterium in question, Brocadia anammoxidans, can be used to synthesize the rocket fuel hydrazine.[16][17]

A coprolite is fossilized feces and is classified as a trace fossil. In paleontology they give evidence about the diet of an animal. They were first described by William Buckland in 1829. Prior to this, they were known as "fossil fir cones" and "bezoar stones". They serve a valuable purpose in paleontology because they provide direct evidence of the predation and diet of extinct organisms.[18] Coprolites may range in size from a few millimetres to more than 60 centimetres.

Palaeofeces are ancient feces, often found as part of archaeological excavations or surveys. Intact paleofeces of ancient people may be found in caves in arid climates and in other locations with suitable preservation conditions. These are studied to determine the diet and health of the people who produced them through the analysis of seeds, small bones, and parasite eggs found inside. Feces may contain information about the person excreting the material as well as information about the material. They also may be analyzed chemically for more in-depth information on the individual who excreted them, using lipid analysis and ancient DNA analysis. The success rate of usable DNA extraction is relatively high in paleofeces, making it more reliable than skeletal DNA retrieval.[19]

The reason this analysis is possible at all is due to the digestive system not being entirely efficient, in the sense that not everything that passes through the digestive system is destroyed. Not all of the surviving material is recognizable, but some of it is. Generally, this material is the best indicator archaeologists can use to determine ancient diets, as no other part of the archaeological record is so direct an indicator.[20]

A process that preserves feces in a way that they may be analyzed later is the Maillard reaction. This reaction creates a casing of sugar that preserves the feces from the elements. To extract and analyze the information contained within, researchers generally have to freeze the feces and grind it up into powder for analysis.[21]

A pet waste station in Tucker, Georgia, US

Animal dung occasionally is used as a cement to make adobe mudbrick huts,[22] or even in throwing sports, especially with cow and camel dung.[23]

Kopi luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈlu.aʔ]), or "civet coffee", is coffee made from coffee berries that have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). Giant pandas provide fertilizer for the world's most expensive green tea.[24] In Malaysia, tea is made from the droppings of stick insects fed on guava leaves.

In northern Thailand, elephants are used to digest coffee beans in order to make Black Ivory coffee, which is among the world's most expensive coffees. Paper is also made from elephant dung in the country.[24]

Dog feces was used in the tanning process of leather during the Victorian era. Collected dog feces, known as "pure", "puer", or "pewer",[25] was mixed with water to form a substance known as "bate", because proteolytic enzymes in the dog feces helped to relax the fibrous structure of the hide before the final stages of tanning.[26] Dog feces collectors were known as pure finders.[27]

Elephants, hippos, koalas and pandas are born with sterile intestines, and require bacteria obtained from eating the feces of their mothers to digest vegetation.

In India, cow dung and cow urine are major ingredients of the traditional Hindu drink Panchagavya. Politician Shankarbhai Vegad stated that they can cure cancer.[28]

In the Middle East, cow dung is consumed for a variety of reasons, such as curing dysentery, a belief of healing properties or as a food staple.

The word faeces is the plural of the Latin word faex meaning "dregs". In most English-language usage, there is no singular form, making the word a plurale tantum;[30] out of various major dictionaries, only one enters variation from plural agreement.[31]

"Feces" is used more in biology and medicine than in other fields (reflecting science's tradition of classical Latin and New Latin)

• In hunting and tracking, terms such as dung, scat, spoor, and droppings normally are used to refer to non-human animal feces
• In husbandry and farming, manure is common.
• Stool is a common term in reference to human feces. For example, in medicine, to diagnose the presence or absence of a medical condition, a stool sample sometimes is requested for testing purposes.[32]
• The term bowel movement(s) (with each movement a defecation event) is also common in health care.

There are many synonyms in informal registers for feces, just like there are for urine. Many are euphemismistic, colloquial, or both; some are profane (such as shit), whereas most belong chiefly to child-directed speech (such as poo or the palindromic word poop) or to crude humor (such as crap, dump, load and turd.).

Horse feces

The feces of animals often has special names (some of them are slang), for example:

• Non-human animals
  • As bulk material – dung
  • Individually – droppings
• Cattle
  • Bulk material – cow dung
  • Individual droppings – cow pats, meadow muffins, etc.
• Deer (and formerly other quarry animals) – fewmets
• Wild carnivores – scat
• Otter – spraint
• Birds (individual) – droppings (also include urine as white crystals of uric acid)
• Seabirds or bats (large accumulations) – guano
• Herbivorous insects, such as caterpillars and leaf beetles – frass
• Earthworms, lugworms etc. – worm castings (feces extruded at ground surface)
• Feces when used as fertilizer (usually mixed with animal bedding and urine) – manure
• Horses – horse manure, roadapple (before motor vehicles became common, horse droppings were a big part of the rubbish communities needed to clean off roads)

In all human cultures, feces elicits varying degrees of disgust in adults. Children under two years typically have no disgust response to it, suggesting it is culturally derived.[33] Disgust toward feces appears to be strongest in cultures where flush toilets make olfactory contact with human feces minimal.[34][35] Disgust is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste (either perceived or imagined) and, secondarily to anything that causes a similar feeling by sense of smell, touch, or vision.

There is a Pile of Poo emoji represented in Unicode as U+1F4A9 💩 PILE OF POO, called unchi or unchi-kun in Japan.[36][37]

Poop is the center of toilet humor, and is commonly in interest of young children and teenagers.[38]