Faecal Excretion - Human vs Animal

KilljoyKlown said:
From your forum ID, can I assume you are a vegetarian of some sort? We have lots of levels of vegetarians on this forum and I would like to know where you fit in?
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Actually I'm a meat eating biased omnivore. My user name has no reference to my dietary habits at all.
 
 
veggiepatch said:
Actually I'm a meat eating biased omnivore. My user name has no reference to my dietary habits at all.
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How did you come by veggiepatch then, if you don't mind? I think there is an old topic "How did you get your ID" that a lot of people responded to, and I found the responses very interesting.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
How did you come by veggiepatch then, if you don't mind? I think there is an old topic "How did you get your ID" that a lot of people responded to, and I found the responses very interesting.
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It has to do with a nickname I had when I was a school. My dad had the same nickname since the late 1930s.

Veg or Veggie....it has to do with our last name. Veggiepatch is just an extrapolation of those nicknames since I bought some acreage back in the mid 1990s.
 
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veggiepatch said:
It has to do with a nickname I had when I was a school. My dad had the same nickname since the late 1930s.

Veg or Veggie....it has to do with our last name. Veggiepatch is just an extrapolation of those nicknames since I bought some acreage back in the mid 1990s.
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You have acreage? Do you grow anything and if you do, do you use fertilizer? A lot of farmers use cow and horse manure (fecal excretions). Farming is not for anyone that doesn't like to get his or her hands dirty.:D
 
veggiepatch said:
Thanks Billvon, but it still doesn't explain human's aversion to excreta in comparison to other animal species. Cows, turtles, blowflies, sharks, whatever, do not have the cognitive skills to build their own sanitary facilities, nor make themselves aware of the "risks" of being exposed to their own wastes.
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Right. But dogs, for example, will poop and then avoid the area they pooped in. They may not be "aware of the risks" but they have an instinctive aversion to their own wastes.

Sharks avoid their own wastes by swimming in a very, very big ocean in three dimensions.

Really what I want to know is why mankind has a fear of contact, in any way shape or form, of their own excreta, whether it be my own, my sister's, my dog's or the horse 20 miles away.
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Well, originally we may not have. The ones that didn't died, the ones that do survived.

Are there any risks associated with exposure to excreta from any living creature? Excluding those such as Hendra virus carriers and so on, of course.
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Sure. Flies and vermin are attracted to excrement; they carry pathogens. Mutated e coli (human waste is composed in large part of e coli) can sicken and kill you.

While not condoning scatological fetishes, I feel that mankind has over-emphasised the fear of his/her waste products as a source of disease. A prime example is a menstruating woman - without any predisposing conditions, her monthly vaginal flow is totally natural and disease free.
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Right. Excrement is not disease free, however.
 
Of the animals that I have worked with, all have an orderly manner of dealing with their excretions and all avoid the area that they use for doing their business.

Pigs are really quite clean animals when given enough room and will put their poop in one area, as did my dogs. Horses will not eat where they drop their dung and some are very orderly, pooping only in one area. Cats are easily trained to a litter box or will find and use a particular area outdoors. Rabbits used one end of their cage and even chickens end up with most of their dung under the roost as they spend a majority of their time roosting when they are not eating or laying eggs.

In my observation most animals display considerable aversion to dung most of the time. While at times they may ingest some poop, of their own or other species, it is usually a minimal amount to obtain vitamin K or to repopulate gut bacteria.

Some species like to roll in manure of various kinds and the exact purpose of this behavior remains somewhat elusive to us but may either disguise their own scent or make them more attractive to others of their own kind.

Humans tend to douse themselves in the perfumed extract of scent glands of other animals also, lol.... :D
 
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