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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's your own Internet dad here with an
Speaker 2: episode you've all just been chomping at the bit for.
Speaker 2: Will she go there? You wondered she went there? Boy?
Speaker 2: Howdy did she? But don't worry. Okay, this one it
Speaker 2: doesn't get too gross.
Speaker 3: I don't know what am I talking about. It's so gross.
Speaker 2: It's an entire episode on animal poo and sometimes ours
Speaker 2: because we are, after all, animals. But I tried to
Speaker 2: just keep it as informative and as illuminating as an
Speaker 2: entire episode on animal excrement can be. But before number two,
Speaker 2: number one, I want to let you know everyone, I
Speaker 2: will be at cal Academy on March fifth, That is
Speaker 2: this Thursday in San Francisco. I'll be at First Fridays
Speaker 2: in La on March sixth for their Secrets from the
Speaker 2: Vault series south by Southwest EEDU on March eleventh. Thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone on Patreon dot com slash ologies for
Speaker 2: submitting your questions and for supporting the show. It's as
Speaker 2: little as twenty five cents an episode to get into
Speaker 2: that club. I'm each person out there wearing ologies March
Speaker 2: and hashtagging at ologies merch so we can repost to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and of course to everyone rating and making
Speaker 2: sure that they're subscribed and telling a friend, and of
Speaker 2: course leaving reviews to freshen up my crappy days, like
Speaker 2: this one from Maxine Sunshine, who says, I am a
Speaker 2: zoo keeper with a cranky kucko. Butura, that's a bird
Speaker 2: I looked up named Cookie, who cackles at compliments, finds
Speaker 2: music miserable, and who's hooping is only silenced by the soothing.
Speaker 3: Voice of Ali Datward.
Speaker 2: The Ologies podcast has given my years peace during the
Speaker 2: hour I spend with Cookie daily and we have both
Speaker 2: learned so much. Cookie's favorite episode is, of course, Ornithology.
Speaker 2: They say, key, this one's for you. Let's just roll
Speaker 2: up our sleeves and just dive right into it scatology.
Speaker 2: It comes from the Greek for feces. You're welcome. Scatology
Speaker 2: is a scientific study or the chemical analysis of feces,
Speaker 2: while coprology is scatology. What.
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: So both same. Also both can mean toilet humor or
Speaker 2: a special interest in poops in a sexy way. Okay.
Speaker 2: So for this scatology episode, we talk a lot about
Speaker 2: zoo poops. And in fact, I got a VIP tour
Speaker 2: in which I saw a freezer that was kind of
Speaker 2: like a porta potty on Noah's art.
Speaker 4: The coolest thing about our labs maybe is our freezers. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this one might be locked, but you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we keep our freezers locked.
Speaker 4: So we have black Rhino, Pygmy Hippo, red river hog who.
Speaker 4: We have our some of our octopus stuff in here.
Speaker 4: We have our gravy zebra background camels are our draft
Speaker 4: or black Bear, our Japanese Macaq, Pickney, Soloris, Diana Monkey,
Speaker 4: I Tamaron, polar Bear. That's just what lives in this freezer.
Speaker 4: Now I have thirteen others. We're gonna go all around
Speaker 4: the zoom.
Speaker 5: We're gonna go through this one for you.
Speaker 2: It's a real poop party. I love that it's like, hey,
Speaker 2: no food or drinking here. You're like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2: What's the word I'm thinking like a sharma. It just
Speaker 2: looks like a lot of rolled up sarma. We have
Speaker 2: mountain gorillas from Wanda in here. Never know what we
Speaker 2: have nor freezer. Wait, there's was a geese.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have goose poop.
Speaker 2: Goose poop, yeah that's in here.
Speaker 4: That's in here or not, but we definitely are doing
Speaker 4: goose poop.
Speaker 2: Eastern massasaka rattlesnakes, snakes poop, yes, not very often, but
Speaker 2: they poop more snow leppers, lots of snow leppers is rarely.
Speaker 4: Gerbils ye, yeah, terble poo, very small lad mice poo
Speaker 4: we have. We have congo there. There are probably gorilla
Speaker 4: samples low on gorillas, and we have mountain gram red
Speaker 4: squirrel samples. That is probably that's even more rare than
Speaker 4: a blackfoot of fair. I think there's only thirty to
Speaker 4: forty left in Arizona.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. It really looks like if Marie Condo
Speaker 2: kept a refrigerator full of shit. Like it's beautiful in there.
Speaker 2: So this ologist has earned the nickname Doctor Poop she
Speaker 2: wears it with pride. So she got her bachelors in
Speaker 2: pre vet science and her masters in animal physiology at
Speaker 2: Clemson University and then her PhD in Environmental science and
Speaker 2: Policy at George Mason University. And she is the director
Speaker 2: of the Davy Center for Epidemiology and under Chronology at
Speaker 2: the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The motto of her program,
Speaker 2: she says, is if it defecates.
Speaker 3: We will study it. So we took a seat and.
Speaker 2: We talked all about tiny poos, giant poos, pebble poos,
Speaker 2: pet poos, whale poos, famous otters, French confections, glitter pills,
Speaker 2: wombat bricks, what poos says about you and how and
Speaker 2: why this animal scientist and conservationist analyzes the feces of
Speaker 2: countless species and loves it. So please curl up for
Speaker 2: the scoop on this rare science with scatologist Doctor Poop
Speaker 2: aka doctor Rachel Santomeyer. So shy, like, just pretendate's not there,
Speaker 2: Pretend it's an ice cream coat. If you could tell
Speaker 2: me your first time last name, Rachel Santa Meyer got it,
Speaker 2: aka doctor Poop? How long have you been doctor Poop?
Speaker 2: I've been doctor Poop for thirteen years.
Speaker 4: I guess. Yeah. My parents are so proud.
Speaker 2: Hey, doctor in front of anything is great. You're doing great, literally,
Speaker 2: doctor from of anything in theory. Yes, I guess.
Speaker 4: They don't really talk to their bridge club about what
Speaker 4: I do, and they just say work at the zoo,
Speaker 4: so just places.
Speaker 2: So now, how did the nickname doctor Poop come to be?
Speaker 4: You know? It was really our learning staff trying to
Speaker 4: get kids excited about the science and oh man, kids
Speaker 4: love poop, right, parents not so much until they started
Speaker 4: to hear the science and they realized how cool it is,
Speaker 4: and then they eventually start getting really excited about the poop.
Speaker 2: So it's a great marketing strategy for real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, except for my mom said I was full of shit,
Speaker 4: so she's got you there to me today, I was like,
Speaker 4: you laughed, you laughed? Oh thanks, mom.
Speaker 2: You've got to get just the best puns in your
Speaker 2: email in box. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: My One of my favorite titles of my talk is
Speaker 4: how fece say Species?
Speaker 2: Do you think that there's a big difference culturally between
Speaker 2: poo and poop? Hmmm, No, I don't think so.
Speaker 4: Maybe pooh sounds more cute than poop, yeah, because poop
Speaker 4: is more like an action in pooh is kind of
Speaker 4: like get the emoji.
Speaker 2: Okay, so quick aside. I look this up and poop
Speaker 2: used to mean to softly break wind. It was on
Speaker 2: a monopoetic in nature. But my guess is that enough
Speaker 2: people had unhappy accidents and whammo boom. Language changes in
Speaker 2: this case from a gas to a solid. Also, pooh
Speaker 2: is relatively new word. It first appeared in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Just in case you're wondering about the movement of the term.
Speaker 2: And so tell me about your journey to the Queen
Speaker 2: of poop.
Speaker 4: They also call me the poop porter, right because I
Speaker 4: don't throw any poop away.
Speaker 2: I keep it.
Speaker 4: And my strategy is just to buy a new freezer
Speaker 4: every year, and I have like fourteen around the zoo,
Speaker 4: and the animal care staff are so nice, toy like
Speaker 4: make room for my new freezers. The facility guys add
Speaker 4: new electricals stuff for me. So so but you know,
Speaker 4: I you know a classic story. I loved animals. We
Speaker 4: had you know, dogs and cats growing up. I like
Speaker 4: middle school, I started riding horses. So I love horses
Speaker 4: and I love to ask people what their favorite animal is,
Speaker 4: because I don't have one. I love all animals. There,
Speaker 4: the feathers, they're fish, you know. I love rodents, you know.
Speaker 4: And so I just loved all animals. And my room
Speaker 4: actually was sort of a zoo because I had parakeets,
Speaker 4: I had hermiticrabs, you know. I had gerbils, you know.
Speaker 4: I had all these animals in my room, and I
Speaker 4: cared for them. I love caring for animals, and in fact,
Speaker 4: if like the zombie apocalypse happened, that's the only skill
Speaker 4: I have. I cannot do anything else but shovel poop basically.
Speaker 4: Oh and maybe that's also why I'm doctor poop.
Speaker 2: But I started off.
Speaker 4: Thinking that if you loved animals, you became a veterinarian.
Speaker 4: And so in high school I worked at a vet's office.
Speaker 4: In college, I was in prevenary science animal science at
Speaker 4: Clemson University, and so my goal was to become a veterinarian,
Speaker 4: and I worked at vets offices. I cared for animals,
Speaker 4: and I applied to at school. I got an interview
Speaker 4: at Teskegee University in Alabama, and literally one person in
Speaker 4: front of me changed my course of my career.
Speaker 2: I didn't get in.
Speaker 4: I didn't get in, and I didn't know what to
Speaker 4: do because that was my whole plan, that was everything
Speaker 4: I'd done built up to that career.
Speaker 2: I panicked because you know, I had to student loans, you.
Speaker 4: Know, you had to start paying these things off in
Speaker 4: six months when you're out of school. And what happened
Speaker 4: was the scientist came down from the National Zoo. His
Speaker 4: name was doctor David Wilt, who unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Had just passed away.
Speaker 4: He talked about how he was an animal scientist and
Speaker 4: how he's applying all these technologies, particularly assist to reproductive
Speaker 4: technologies like artificial insemination, semen collection and evaluation, and cryopreservation,
Speaker 4: to wildlife, to endangered species like cheetahs and cloud of leopards,
Speaker 4: and I thought, that's what I want to do. I
Speaker 4: want to do that, and it just so happens. You know,
Speaker 4: the zoo field we were a little inbred, and I
Speaker 4: somehow connected through Clemson and Smithsonian Institution where Dave will
Speaker 4: was from, and started my masters at Clemson and did
Speaker 4: a zoo project on Black Holler monkeys, and then I
Speaker 4: got hired by the Smithsonian to work in their undercronology
Speaker 4: lab and then I started doing my PhD there and
Speaker 4: got to work on one of the rarest mammals we
Speaker 4: have here in North America, the blackfooted ferret.
Speaker 2: Just a quick fyi on blackfooted ferret. The ferret endemic
Speaker 2: to North America, so because they munch on prairie dogs,
Speaker 2: and prairie dog habitat is now largely like shopping centers.
Speaker 2: The species got down to only eighteen individuals at one point,
Speaker 2: so for her PhD, Rachel studied their reproduction and still
Speaker 2: works with breeding programs to get their numbers up. There
Speaker 2: are only about seven hundred left on the planet. So
Speaker 2: think of your local movie houses, dome theater and then
Speaker 2: fill each seat with one North American blackfooted ferret, just
Speaker 2: a little weasel, just a little sock with a face,
Speaker 2: maybe sitting there watching a costume drama. Imagine that now
Speaker 2: there are less of those ferrets on planet Earth than
Speaker 2: would be in a dome theater because we saw a
Speaker 2: bunch of North American prairie land and we were like,
Speaker 2: you know what, this needs a parking lot for a
Speaker 2: hobby lobby. Now did your work with the blackfooted ferret?
Speaker 2: Did that kind of introduce you to analyzing poop? To
Speaker 2: find out about ender chronology of a species. It did. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So you know, a ferret is a mastellid, which is
Speaker 4: a very stinky species, so you can imagine their FECs. Yes,
Speaker 4: they are pretty stinky. So I started in nineteen ninety
Speaker 4: eight at the Smithsonian to work on blackfooted ferret looking
Speaker 4: at reproductive hormones and seeing how they change seasonally and
Speaker 4: how they're related to age. And then the other species
Speaker 4: I started with was the fishing cat. So I don't
Speaker 4: know if you have a cat, but you know cat
Speaker 4: poop really stinks, not a good smoke. Yeah, and then
Speaker 4: you combine it with eating only fish.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 4: Yes. So in the Smithsonian we had the fecal lab.
Speaker 4: People would leave the fickle lab when I pulled out
Speaker 4: the fishing cat samples, and it was so bad. I mean, like,
Speaker 4: you know, you know it's gonna smell in the fecal lab,
Speaker 4: but when Rachel pulls out those fishing cat samples, people leave.
Speaker 2: They just can't take it. I I'm very tolerant of poop.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I didn't mind so much, but yeah, I
Speaker 4: got that. I was really like a privilege to work on,
Speaker 4: you know, one of the rarest mammals we have here
Speaker 4: in North America, and then also another species like the
Speaker 4: fishing cat. I mean, what's more unique? You know this
Speaker 4: cat that like dive into water to eat fish. You know,
Speaker 4: that's pretty cool. So not many cats would do that.
Speaker 2: This woman not only does she merrily work.
Speaker 3: With Pooh, she calls it a privilege.
Speaker 2: So y'all find what you love. Bloom where you're planted,
Speaker 2: just make sure you're covered in fertilizer. And why do
Speaker 2: you think you are so tolerant of feces.
Speaker 4: Because I've always taking care of animals, whether it was
Speaker 4: bird poop, gerbil poop, dog poop, cat poop. You know,
Speaker 4: it's you know all about the poop, fish and poop
Speaker 4: and so horsepoop man. Yeah, so uh yeah, I just
Speaker 4: very tolerant. Now, the thing, probably the least favorite thing
Speaker 4: of my job has been saliva. Oh really, yes, saliva.
Speaker 4: So let me tell you about our pigmy hippo. They
Speaker 4: have a breeding recommendation for our two pigmy hippos, and
Speaker 4: so they wanted to see if they could time when
Speaker 4: to pair them together because they're generally solitary animals, and
Speaker 4: so we try to look at hormones and unfortunately with
Speaker 4: the pigmy hippo, they like to poop in the water.
Speaker 4: Oh and that pretty much ruins my sample because there's
Speaker 4: a hormones in the water, maybe from the fish, from
Speaker 4: everything else. So I needed, you know, a good fecal
Speaker 4: sample from them. And so we actually tried saliva. And
Speaker 4: the way we do that it was we had our
Speaker 4: female and we would show her corn and she loved corn.
Speaker 4: So Sue would start to salivate and just drool come out,
Speaker 4: and they would take a pipe and they would pipe
Speaker 4: it off the ground and they put it in a syringe
Speaker 4: and put it in a test tube for me, and
Speaker 4: then it would come to the lab and I'd had
Speaker 4: to pipe it out of the test tube and it
Speaker 4: literally would.
Speaker 2: Just string from one tube to the next, like that's
Speaker 2: the thing that grows out. But you know, I'm a mom.
Speaker 4: Now, this is before I was a mom, And now
Speaker 4: I'm like whatever, you know, I can tolerate anything.
Speaker 7: But yeah, before that was, I was like, gimme poop please.
Speaker 7: This life is pretty gross. Somewhere there's a doctor spit.
Speaker 7: He just doesn't understand you at all. I'm gonna have
Speaker 7: to look that up. Okay, Yes, I look this up
Speaker 7: and there is a doctor Spit. So Missouri news station
Speaker 7: KY three interviewed this local legend who is a blues
Speaker 7: harmonica player.
Speaker 2: His name is doctor Spit something like that. You do
Speaker 2: not get to pick your nickname. Somebody inebriated in the bar,
Speaker 2: besides what your name's going to be. So I did
Speaker 2: a little more digging and found out sadly, doctor Spit
Speaker 2: aka Ron Alexander is no longer with us, So blues
Speaker 2: fans have a little more reason to be blue. But yes,
Speaker 2: in the wisdom of doctor Spit, the nickname chooses you.
Speaker 2: And now, broadly speaking, what is poop? Hoop poops? Plants
Speaker 2: don't poop, animals do. What's happening? What is it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's a book.
Speaker 4: Everybody poops, right, everyone poops, and so yeah, so what
Speaker 4: happens is we're looking for well for wildlife. In chronology,
Speaker 4: we're looking at these steroid hormones, and these hormones are
Speaker 4: related to reproduction, so we can determine pregnancy, we can
Speaker 4: determine when the female's.
Speaker 2: Receptive or an estress.
Speaker 4: And then we also look at stress, right, and we
Speaker 4: always think stress is a bad thing, but really stress
Speaker 4: is a necessary response that we and animals have to
Speaker 4: deal with situations. And then we have distress, which is
Speaker 4: the negative stress that you know, it could be bullying
Speaker 4: or something that you don't really really is upsetting. And
Speaker 4: there's also you stress, which is like riding that roller coaster,
Speaker 4: being super excited, you know. For our animals is getting enrichment,
Speaker 4: and so stress is very important. So we use these
Speaker 4: steroid hormones to look at that. And so what happens
Speaker 4: is there's some kind of response, either a stress response
Speaker 4: or a reproductive's response. So like this time of year,
Speaker 4: the days are starting to lengthen, so a lot of
Speaker 4: species are long day breeders, like courses for example, So
Speaker 4: they're going to start coming into estrus, right, they're going
Speaker 4: to start getting ready to breed. And so these cues
Speaker 4: signal the hormones to be released and they circulate in
Speaker 4: the blood. But for something like stress, I can't really
Speaker 4: get a blood sample from animals, even from people, because
Speaker 4: that causes stress itself, right, So we look for alternative samples.
Speaker 4: And what's nice is the liver actually functions in the
Speaker 4: body to make these steroids, which are made from cholesterol,
Speaker 4: so they're oily, they're hydrophobic. They add a compound to
Speaker 4: make them hydrophilic so they can be excreted in urine
Speaker 4: and feces.
Speaker 2: Oh so when we're done with our stress hormones, we're like,
Speaker 2: get out of here. Yeah, take the back door. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: we could truly be responding. That's not a healthy thing, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So they they have their purpose, their job, and then
Speaker 4: the body gets rid of them, and so we take
Speaker 4: advantage of that. You know, with human pregnancy tests, you
Speaker 4: can use urine, right, and that's actually a protein hormone
Speaker 4: that you're looking for. But for in feces, we're looking
Speaker 4: at these steroids and it's just really convenient that we
Speaker 4: can get it from poop because then we don't have to.
Speaker 2: Stress the animals out.
Speaker 4: It's like we're poop detectives because you know, they literally
Speaker 4: like you know, the especially here at the zoo, the
Speaker 4: animal care staff has to pick up the samples. And
Speaker 4: now they can simply put it in a ziploc bag,
Speaker 4: put it in the freezer, and I can come along,
Speaker 4: we can pick it up, we can thiw it, and
Speaker 4: we can figure out what's going on inside the animal.
Speaker 4: And that's so important because this they have behaviors. But
Speaker 4: if you've had a cat or dog, you know that
Speaker 4: they hide certain things from you. Well, sometimes they can't
Speaker 4: hide their guilt.
Speaker 2: You got in the kitty catch treats while I was going.
Speaker 4: But you know other things when like for example, they're
Speaker 4: in pain or anything else you can't really understand. Sometimes
Speaker 4: maybe they're hiding more. And so we integrate behavior animal
Speaker 4: behavior with inner chronology to really look at the physiology
Speaker 4: the response that they're having so we can interpret the
Speaker 4: behavior better. And vice versa too.
Speaker 2: And so the zoo keepers, as long as they're poop scooping,
Speaker 2: they get in there, they take a little handful, if
Speaker 2: you will, Yeah, and then put it in a ziplock.
Speaker 2: What just like roll it up like a sausage and
Speaker 2: pop it in the Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well they usually invert the bag and like grab it,
Speaker 4: you know, you know, it's just like you do with
Speaker 4: your dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, same thing.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And then how many samples of pooh do you think
Speaker 2: you have in your seventeen freezer? Don't let anybody of
Speaker 2: the zoo know this.
Speaker 4: I probably we do about we change some of our
Speaker 4: science recently, but in general we do about eight to
Speaker 4: ten thousand samples a year.
Speaker 2: Oohm.
Speaker 4: So that's about, you know, one hundred and thirty thousand samples.
Speaker 4: If anybody wants to support biobanking, please send us money.
Speaker 4: Lows we use your freezers, donate to us, you know.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, but I can't throw them. I can't
Speaker 4: throw them away because you can't go back in time.
Speaker 4: And if you want to see how things have changed,
Speaker 4: which is really important for zoos. We want our animals
Speaker 4: continuously and we want to see how they change over time,
Speaker 4: and so it's important to keep those archive samples. And
Speaker 4: then I also have lots of other questions as a
Speaker 4: scientist who are always asking questions. We get them answered,
Speaker 4: and then we have like ten more the go with that,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, so I just hoard it. Good, Yeah, good.
Speaker 2: But now I.
Speaker 4: Switched to we use hair now for hormone analysis, and
Speaker 4: it gives us a slightly different perspective. There's actually some
Speaker 4: debate about whether the hair, the steroids in the hair,
Speaker 4: the hormones in the hair are telling you about what
Speaker 4: happened when the hair was growing or when or what
Speaker 4: happen ye yesterday kind of thing. More of a cute
Speaker 4: response because unlike most wildlife species, their hair doesn't coninually
Speaker 4: grow like ours and a lot of the human literature,
Speaker 4: they're able to cut up the hair and kind of
Speaker 4: get a timeline of either chemical abuse or poisoning. You know,
Speaker 4: all the forensic stuff out there is really cool, and
Speaker 4: so we took that science and are applying it to
Speaker 4: wildlife and looking at stress levels, so we can really
Speaker 4: see kind of what's going on in the fecal The
Speaker 4: hormones and the feces are telling you what happened yesterday.
Speaker 4: Hair might be telling you what's happened last week or
Speaker 4: two weeks ago or last month.
Speaker 2: So yes, both hair and droppings are non invasive relatively,
Speaker 2: and they can give you different data. But with turds,
Speaker 2: you know it's pretty recent. Also, let's get gross. Let's
Speaker 2: zoom in and discuss what doodo really is other than
Speaker 2: something you usually do not want to look at closely.
Speaker 2: And now you've had your hands in every kind of
Speaker 2: pooh I imagine from like geese to hippos to she
Speaker 2: does what are some commonalities and what are some differences?
Speaker 2: Like what is stool? Is it mostly bacteria? Is it
Speaker 2: mostly fiber?
Speaker 4: Like what is this? Yeah, it's a combination of everything, right,
Speaker 4: it's just the waste product of what we ate and
Speaker 4: what's in our system. And so yeah, it has lots
Speaker 4: of bacteria, which are sort of our enemy for hormones
Speaker 4: because it continual us to break down the hormones if
Speaker 4: we don't get it in the freezer fast.
Speaker 2: When you look at all these different.
Speaker 4: Species like elephants or black rhinos which we have here
Speaker 4: at the zoo, it's like all fiber. You're like, how
Speaker 4: is there any poo in the sample or is it
Speaker 4: just like cut up hay. You know, it's say with
Speaker 4: the zebras and horses. You know, it's really like this
Speaker 4: looks just like hey, with some some poop smeared around it.
Speaker 2: But we can actually look at the poop when we
Speaker 2: get so.
Speaker 4: Familiar with our animals here at the zoo, our staff
Speaker 4: can see the poop samples and know when the staff
Speaker 4: have accidentally mixed up the bags because you know, they
Speaker 4: all look like a certain sometimes food item or but
Speaker 4: like talk and poop kind of looks like little olives,
Speaker 4: and our different females had like different shapes and size olives,
Speaker 4: so we knew when they kind of mix them up.
Speaker 4: You know, the camels they have like golf balls. They
Speaker 4: have golf ball poops, and but the rhinos of course
Speaker 4: have the bowling ball, right, and so we don't get
Speaker 4: to we don't necessarily get the bowling balls. We get
Speaker 4: part of the bowling balls.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the very fibrous, this imagery will stay on
Speaker 2: my mind for a while.
Speaker 4: And then you know, the the apes and the primates,
Speaker 4: you know, that's just a whole nother story.
Speaker 2: But it's more like human. Yeah, it's more like.
Speaker 4: Human, and it's definitely more well, I can't say that
Speaker 4: because the male black rhino feces is pretty stinky. They
Speaker 4: use a lot of pheromones and odor cues for communication
Speaker 4: because they're solitary animals. So but yeah, I think one
Speaker 4: of the worst samples I've had in my lab was
Speaker 4: actually my own dog's poop.
Speaker 2: You's just really wow.
Speaker 4: You're just like, you know, the doors get closed, you know,
Speaker 4: from the stat that work on their computers versus the
Speaker 4: fecal lab staff, you know, or when we do the
Speaker 4: polar bear, it's a lot.
Speaker 2: Of like fish and stuff that is pretty stinky. Okay,
Speaker 2: So in a herd of giraffes or a pride of lions,
Speaker 2: or a party of orangutangs.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to hope that a group of rangu
Speaker 2: tanks is called a party. Actually, hold on, okay, I
Speaker 2: just looked it up and it's a congress of orangutangs,
Speaker 2: which wow, I wish our congress has worked like that.
Speaker 2: But anyway, how do they figure out who left well behind?
Speaker 4: But the fecal marker study this is this is one
Speaker 4: of the best things, one of the best papers I published.
Speaker 4: I think, very practical. But what do you do when
Speaker 4: you have a whole bunch of individuals together and you
Speaker 4: want to sample each individual? It's like, you know, you
Speaker 4: can either have to have a staff member or volunteer
Speaker 4: that sits there and waits for them to defecate, which
Speaker 4: could be a long time, dependent on the species.
Speaker 2: Right, And so we.
Speaker 4: Devised a way to mark the feces and so you
Speaker 4: can give them food coloring and make their feces green
Speaker 4: or well usually green and green and blue come out green.
Speaker 4: So it's it's kind of hard to find different colors.
Speaker 4: We've fed glitter to our animals, non toxic glitter of course,
Speaker 4: non toxic beads, all these different things, seeds, blueberries.
Speaker 2: We have seeds, you know, anything that has seeds. So
Speaker 2: there's a couple couple issues with us.
Speaker 4: Okay, so when you feed them bird seed like millet
Speaker 4: to mark their feces, the house sparrows come and eat
Speaker 4: it out of the feces before you can follow. Yea,
Speaker 4: so oh the house sparrows, Yeah, they eat the seeds
Speaker 4: out of there, so that kind of well, that's not
Speaker 4: a good marker.
Speaker 2: And then the chimpanzees are probably the worst because.
Speaker 5: Hang on to your stomachs, gag triggers ahead, they see
Speaker 5: that pretty green feces that someone just defecated, and then
Speaker 5: they go eat it and they all eat it, so
Speaker 5: then everyone has green feces.
Speaker 4: So you cannot mark a chimpanzee's feces just because everybody
Speaker 4: else eats it, and then everybone else's species is marked.
Speaker 2: How what did the glitter experiment go? And went pretty well?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: Some species, you know how the non toxic glitter has
Speaker 4: different colors, right, Well, when we fed it to our lions,
Speaker 4: they basically pooped out silver glitter no matter what color
Speaker 4: we gave them. But I had a graduate student, Chris Schell,
Speaker 4: that worked on coyotes, and the coyotes they actually would
Speaker 4: still poop out the color of the glitter that they
Speaker 4: didn't eat all I on their system didn't eat off
Speaker 4: the color of the glitter, so he could use multiple
Speaker 4: glitter colors to mark the different coyote feces, which was awesome.
Speaker 2: So side note, of course you can purchase glitter filled capsules,
Speaker 2: and of course people sell them on Etsy as shitter
Speaker 2: glitter pills, but according to reviews, you got to take
Speaker 2: a lot of them. And also some glitter is actually
Speaker 2: just tiny plastic pieces, so let's just make a pack
Speaker 2: to not Also, speaking of canines, I'm sorry I had
Speaker 2: to ask, well, I have a question, what was your
Speaker 2: dog's poop doing in the lab? Did you was that
Speaker 2: just tracked in on a shoe or are you comparing?
Speaker 2: I use all my animals to developer methods.
Speaker 4: So like we were studying domestic dogs in and around
Speaker 4: the Sarrangeti National Park and Tanzania. The domestic dogs are
Speaker 4: used for service right they help protect the livestock from predation.
Speaker 4: The problem with domestic dogs also is that they give
Speaker 4: diseases like canon distemper or rabies to the wildlife, but
Speaker 4: also rabies to people. And so we started a vaccination
Speaker 4: campaign to reduce distemper which was affecting the lions, and
Speaker 4: then reduce rabies, which affects a lot of species, including people.
Speaker 4: And so I had to sort of develop the field
Speaker 4: methods to take to the Serengeti so they could we
Speaker 4: extract the hormones from the dog feces. And so then
Speaker 4: I was using my dog species, I used my cat species.
Speaker 4: I use my dog's hair. My dog's toenails, we do toenails.
Speaker 2: The horse.
Speaker 4: We haven't done horsepoop yet, but we've done horse hair,
Speaker 4: you know, because I just have it. And if we're
Speaker 4: just kind of trying to develop the methods in the lab,
Speaker 4: you just we just need a product, right, we need
Speaker 4: something to work with. So yeah, so yeah, we used
Speaker 4: all my animals, So use what you got. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Do you ever have any humans come to you and say, hey,
Speaker 2: doctor poop, can you see if I'm doing all?
Speaker 4: Right? Uh? No, Uh, we don't do We don't do
Speaker 4: any human service stuff, though it's been accidental where we've
Speaker 4: tried to develop some controls for our hormone essays and
Speaker 4: used human urine to do that. And at the time,
Speaker 4: my technician was pregnant and didn't know it, and you know, wow,
Speaker 4: we had some progesterone controls there, so that was accidental.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you let her know. Oh yeah she found out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she found she was doing it and she found
Speaker 4: out and she didn't tell anybody because you know, so
Speaker 4: you had to wait for a wow of course. And
Speaker 4: then yeah, so what a way to find out? Yeah,
Speaker 4: what a way to find out?
Speaker 2: Yep, just a busy day at the office.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and now you mentioned a little bit about bowling
Speaker 2: ball rhino oh pooh, which is I'm still boggled by.
Speaker 2: Does it really come out like a volleyball? It does?
Speaker 4: Yes? And then I don't know if you've ever seen
Speaker 4: a dog do this where they scrape their back legs
Speaker 4: after they go to the bathroom. Yes, that's a sign
Speaker 4: of territoriality. They're marking their territory. And rhinos do that.
Speaker 4: But they purposely step in their feces and then they
Speaker 4: walk away because that's how they mark their territory. They
Speaker 4: have these little latrines called middens where they come by,
Speaker 4: they defecate, they stop in it, they scrape in it,
Speaker 4: and they walk away.
Speaker 2: Rude. Wow, wow, Wow, I don't know what your phone's
Speaker 2: data plan is but if you get a hot second,
Speaker 2: feel free to google rhino pooping and you will find
Speaker 2: we are in good company with hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: people who have also wanted to watch rhinos shitting in
Speaker 2: their middens, which, by the way, is a word which
Speaker 2: comes from the Scandinavian for muck heap. So one video
Speaker 2: by YouTuber zagif Zelionoff shows the moment that a San
Speaker 2: Diego Zoo rhino turns its posterior to the crowd, lifts
Speaker 2: a tail, and averts its floopy pink poop shoot ooops,
Speaker 2: letting rumble fourth a dozen wet cannon balls of mashed
Speaker 2: and digested hey, and a little liquid trickle at the end,
Speaker 2: kind of like a delicate bow. When zag if Zelyonoff
Speaker 2: took this vacation video, I highly doubt he knew that
Speaker 2: it would be getting nearly eight hundred thousand views. But
Speaker 2: here we are, and he's in good company with professional
Speaker 2: poop doctors, and.
Speaker 4: So well we're actually we're the rude ones because we
Speaker 4: put camera traps on the latrains because we wanted to
Speaker 4: get them in the act, because it's very important. Of course,
Speaker 4: this is all the all for science is to know
Speaker 4: when they defecated, how long has that sample been exposed
Speaker 4: to the environment. And I already told you that bacteria
Speaker 4: breaking down the hormones is our nemesis, right, we want
Speaker 4: to stop that from happening, and so so anyway, so.
Speaker 2: We put the camera traps.
Speaker 4: It cakes picture of the rhinos when they're in action,
Speaker 4: and then we have also the time and date stamp
Speaker 4: when that that sample was left so we can study them.
Speaker 4: So we were studying black rhinos in South Africa. We
Speaker 4: like rarely ever saw rhinos. They're so elusive and so
Speaker 4: those elusive poopers are really challenging, and so you can
Speaker 4: you have to get stealth, and you have to get
Speaker 4: these camera traps and figure out where to set them.
Speaker 2: Now, that's so illegal if it's humans, but if it's rhinos,
Speaker 2: it's fine. That's right exactly. And when it comes to smells,
Speaker 2: why are some so distinct, It's because of what they eat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I don't know what I'm feeding my
Speaker 4: one dog, and may also just be the bacteria and
Speaker 4: they're gut microbes that are causing this smell. But yes,
Speaker 4: there's definitely related to food and bacteria.
Speaker 2: And now when you're doing your lab work. I've seen
Speaker 2: pictures of you. You're you're swabbing, you're cutting things, You're
Speaker 2: you're stirring them with what looks like a tiny immersion.
Speaker 4: Blenderrect I call it a special test tube blender.
Speaker 2: Yes, a homogenizer. A homogenizer is the word. Yes, is
Speaker 2: the science word for it. But it's really like if
Speaker 2: you were going.
Speaker 4: To froth up like a lot exactly. I tell people
Speaker 4: that's our field methods. I said, do not use this
Speaker 4: to make mixed drinks. This is just for feces. Let's
Speaker 4: keep it separate, Yes, totally VCS only.
Speaker 2: How are you running those assets to figure out like
Speaker 2: what kind of hormones are in there? Like do you have?
Speaker 2: How do you deal with all the data? I guess
Speaker 2: that's my question, one day at a time.
Speaker 4: It is overwhelming because we we you know, conservation is
Speaker 4: a crisis science. We are losing species so quickly, and
Speaker 4: so we all want to work together, we all want
Speaker 4: to get things done. But it gets overwhelming with all
Speaker 4: the data. And so you know, here every month we're
Speaker 4: collecting samples from our zoo animals. When we have questions,
Speaker 4: we're analyzing them, we're graphing them. We're sending them to
Speaker 4: the manager so we can work with the managers. I'm
Speaker 4: helping them manage their animals, and so it's it can
Speaker 4: be over it can just be overwhelming. But I have
Speaker 4: a lot of graduate students and so it's their responsibility
Speaker 4: to keep the data all organized and graph it and
Speaker 4: show it to me and analyze it.
Speaker 2: So that helps. That helps having students and staff members too.
Speaker 2: What's your pure l routine. Do you have a hand
Speaker 2: sanitizer preference or is it like do you become desensitized
Speaker 2: like booze pooh. Fine, you have to.
Speaker 4: Be careful because there are diseases and feces, parasites, viruses,
Speaker 4: and so we have to periodically remind people that this
Speaker 4: is feces and you have to be careful, and so.
Speaker 2: We have we have lots of protocols.
Speaker 4: You never, even in your office, eat anything that's hit
Speaker 4: the ground.
Speaker 2: There's no five second role around us, for sure.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we have a dirty lab and we keep
Speaker 4: feces in a certain place and it has to be
Speaker 4: either zip blocked in a bag to be in another place,
Speaker 4: but or it's in this in the fecal lab. We
Speaker 4: have these strict rules to make sure that we don't
Speaker 4: have any contamination, any spread of diseases and stuff. So
Speaker 4: it's really important actually, because you know, it still is
Speaker 4: poop though we're pretty desensitized to it.
Speaker 2: Do you think that's where the kind of wiring for
Speaker 2: shame around number two happens because it's easy to be
Speaker 2: like I gotta go be but you would never be like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go take a dump, like you would never
Speaker 2: announce that. Like, are there certain animals Does it happen
Speaker 2: more with primates or social animals that seem more embarrassed
Speaker 2: about taking a dump?
Speaker 4: I don't know about embarrassed, but you know, they're what
Speaker 4: I call the elusive poopers like cats who.
Speaker 2: Bury their feces, right, they hide.
Speaker 4: Their feces, unlike you know, some ungulates like deer that
Speaker 4: may walk and poop at the same time. You know,
Speaker 4: rhinos have a specific location or they're gonna go They're
Speaker 4: gonna go to their midden, they're gonna defecate.
Speaker 2: Their dogs are just kind of you know, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, there might be some personalities that may be
Speaker 4: a little bit more shy than others, but you know,
Speaker 4: typically the feces that they're either trying to hide that
Speaker 4: they're there and so they're going to cover it up,
Speaker 4: or they're advertising that they're there right, or they don't care.
Speaker 2: So you know, it just kind of really depends on
Speaker 2: the species.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Ps. I asked the Internet why humans are ashamed of
Speaker 2: their own poops and got back everything from our innate
Speaker 2: desire to avoid parasites. Because even deer and sheep and
Speaker 2: cows do not graze where they PLoP. To the Bible,
Speaker 2: so Deuteronomy twenty three to twelve, anyone quote, you must
Speaker 2: have a place outside the camp to go and relieve yourself,
Speaker 2: and you must have a digging tool in your equipment
Speaker 2: so that when you relieve yourself, you can dig a
Speaker 2: hole and cover it up your excrement. So yes, even
Speaker 2: God politely asked that you drop all deuces downwind and
Speaker 2: away from the camp kitchen. Okay, And when I say you,
Speaker 2: I'm including raccoons. I think I have a raccoon latrine
Speaker 2: in my backyard. Ooh, I know, I know roundworms right, yes,
Speaker 2: in the brain. Luckily it down the hill for me. Yes,
Speaker 2: But I was like, who's been pooping in the art?
Speaker 2: And I think, and I looked it up, and I
Speaker 2: think it might be a raccoon toilet. Yes, that's cursed
Speaker 2: with a raccoon toilet. Yes, yes, so that's something that
Speaker 2: you should call it professional for that, right.
Speaker 4: I would definitely either avoid it or try to bury
Speaker 4: it or something.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, who I was. I got so excited about
Speaker 2: having raccoon parties, and then I was like, well, that's
Speaker 2: I don't want a brain parasite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's there's some there's some reasons why
Speaker 4: there's human wildlife conflict, right, and then some other things
Speaker 4: that we should appreciate nature and engage with nature. But
Speaker 4: you know, we also have to make sure that we
Speaker 4: stay healthy and the animals stay healthy too.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So were some of our habits too are bad for them?
Speaker 4: Like leaving trash out?
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. Yeah, we don't want to leave a
Speaker 2: Vegas style buffet for a raccoon. No exactly. Oh. I
Speaker 2: wanted to ask, and I asked this copalto ologists. Is
Speaker 2: there a movie or a TV show that deals with
Speaker 2: this type of science or who in general that you
Speaker 2: feel like really gets it right or wrong? How is
Speaker 2: the poomji? Is the poom oji on points from the eyes?
Speaker 4: No? And it depends on the species, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's you know, it's more kind of a primate poo
Speaker 4: than a It's not a ball, it's not it's not olive.
Speaker 4: It's not a you know, golf ball or a bowling
Speaker 4: ball or so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of insular of us to choose a
Speaker 2: primate pooh. Yes, primates tend to have like the soft
Speaker 2: served Yeah, chocolate soft serve. Do you have a problem
Speaker 2: going to self serve yogurut?
Speaker 6: I know?
Speaker 4: In fact, I make these, uh, these awesome chocolate mint
Speaker 4: cookies every Christmas.
Speaker 2: That are shaped like Pooh, like a little.
Speaker 4: Round poof, and you know they come from the you know,
Speaker 4: Speakle lab, you know, happy Holidays.
Speaker 2: I put some.
Speaker 4: Powdered sugar on there, so you know, less less like
Speaker 4: Pooh Pooh, but you know, yeah, yeah, no, I think
Speaker 4: it's funny.
Speaker 2: It's great. Yeah, is it? Is it? Which species is it?
Speaker 2: Does it most resemble? It's probably more like a camel,
Speaker 2: okay than anything else. Yeah, this is just like a
Speaker 2: little ball. It's a golf ball. I have so many
Speaker 2: questions from listeners that I'm holding off asking some of
Speaker 2: them because I know listeners want to ask them. So
Speaker 2: can I ask you Patreon questions? Sure? Okay, good, okay,
Speaker 2: but before you're burning poop questions a quick break. So
Speaker 2: each episode we donate to a charity of the ologists choosing,
Speaker 2: and the Lincoln Park Zoo of Chicago funds so much
Speaker 2: great conservation work and remains free to all visitors, which rules.
Speaker 2: So Rachel aka Doctor Poop would like a donation to
Speaker 2: go to them. It's a really beautiful campus, so do
Speaker 2: take a stroll around next time you're in the Windy City.
Speaker 2: So that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 2: who you may hear about now.
Speaker 6: Mom, why did I call it Scottish cheese?
Speaker 2: It's Cottash cheese, honey. And I'm not sure did.
Speaker 6: The dogs in other countries speak different languages? Yeah?
Speaker 8: I think so.
Speaker 6: Well when we get there.
Speaker 2: Well, we've got to fix the car first, but there's
Speaker 2: someone coming to help us.
Speaker 6: Is it the man from Geneva?
Speaker 2: Not Geneva, he's from a Viva. Oh there's the van. Now.
Speaker 8: For car insurance with breakdown rescue, it takes a Viva
Speaker 8: visit Aviva dottaye to say fifteen percent acceptance criteria terms
Speaker 8: and conditions apply. Minimum premium of three hundred and ten
Speaker 8: year oh fifteen percent DISCANNT applies to new policies bought online.
Speaker 8: See Aviva dotta E for details. Car insurance is underwritten
Speaker 8: by Aviva Insurance, Arland Duck Aviva Direct Arland Limited is
Speaker 8: regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get to your questions.
Speaker 2: Okay, questions from patrons. We got close to three hundred
Speaker 2: in twenty four hours. People want to know about pooh.
Speaker 2: Sandra Abate just made a comment and just said, what
Speaker 2: a shitty subject with a poo emoji and also a
Speaker 2: tongue out emoji, which is like not a good pair
Speaker 2: if you ask me visually. But the most popular question
Speaker 2: I would say, we got it was asked by Joe Weenenoffer,
Speaker 2: Sid Rachel Weiss, Hailey Hullings, Paul Hancock, Jeffrey Doyle, Madeline Winter,
Speaker 2: SCHMITTI Thompson, Toby James, and then first time question askers
Speaker 2: Karen Elliott, Bennett Gerber, Kyle Torres and JJ Pierce. Everyone
Speaker 2: wants to know. Karen Elliott's word says wombat poop square?
Speaker 2: What the hell is that about? How? Why?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: And Paul Hancock said, how do they make a square?
Speaker 2: Poop with what I assume is a round bum hoole. Wow.
Speaker 4: You know, I actually had no idea that it was
Speaker 4: square because we don't have a lot of Australian species here.
Speaker 2: They shit a brick. Yeah, it's so weird. I think
Speaker 2: something must have gone viral on the internet like a
Speaker 2: few months ago, because I did not know that Walt's
Speaker 2: poop square. Wow, I'll look it up. Yeah, is that crazy?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That is crazy because houch those corners, I know, I
Speaker 2: know they can't there's no way that they can have
Speaker 2: a rhombus buttthole.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't like form when it hits the ground
Speaker 4: and be like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know, but I thought people
Speaker 2: were joshing. I thought they were shitting me, but apparently
Speaker 2: they're not. Of course, I'm going to have your backside
Speaker 2: with an explanation here. And this is a pretty new finding.
Speaker 2: So in the fifty million years that wombat have been
Speaker 2: waddling around the planet, these large potato shaped marsupials have
Speaker 2: shit mysteries until November twenty eighteen, when Georgia Tech scientist
Speaker 2: doctor Patricia Yang, a fellow scatologist lead authored on a
Speaker 2: paper titled how do wombats make cubed poo. So they
Speaker 2: took the intestines of two wombats who died from vehicular
Speaker 2: womba side and as another author, David Who told Science News, quote,
Speaker 2: we opened up those intestines like it was Christmas. So
Speaker 2: they found by blowing up balloons that in the last
Speaker 2: eight percent of the intestines water is absorbed and the
Speaker 2: lumps get dry and are shifted around in a way
Speaker 2: to compress one side and then the other, and then boop,
Speaker 2: very dry square peg shoots out of a round hole.
Speaker 2: They can pop out up to one hundred of these
Speaker 2: two centimeter suckers a night, and they stack them up
Speaker 2: in piles to communicate to other wombats.
Speaker 8: What is life?
Speaker 2: Also colorI let's talk about it. Stircle Billin is what
Speaker 2: browns it down, and it's the product of metabolized blood
Speaker 2: and bile. So more pale, floaty and quote offending stool
Speaker 2: might mean higher fat concentration and faster transit time. It
Speaker 2: may indicate a pancreatic issue, y'all, and super dark and
Speaker 2: or bloody could be signs of internal bleeding or a tumor.
Speaker 2: So take a peep and then talk to a doc,
Speaker 2: probably not a doctor Pooh at the zoo though, ps
Speaker 2: if yours has ever been like a Saint Patty's shade
Speaker 2: of green and I'm looking at you, Patrons Tara and Jana.
Speaker 2: It was likely you ready for this from eating something
Speaker 2: with blue food coloring, which breaks down into this very
Speaker 2: concerning verdant hue. So drink a few liters of purple
Speaker 2: sourus Rex kool Aid get back to me, actually, please
Speaker 2: don't A lot of people Megan King, Grace Lauren, Joe Farantino,
Speaker 2: Logan k Don Swart, Ryan Clark, and Emily Crook first
Speaker 2: time question askers Emily and Show They want to know
Speaker 2: why dogs love to snack on pooh? Why? Meghan King says,
Speaker 2: why do dogs enjoy eating cat poop so much? They
Speaker 2: treat them like I treat non parrellas like candies. Also,
Speaker 2: non parrellas are those flattened chocolate kisses with sprinkles on
Speaker 2: one side, even though actually the little round sprinkles are
Speaker 2: the non parrellas, and in French that means without equal.
Speaker 2: But they look like a pile of colorful hardshelled deer
Speaker 2: droppings on a micro scale. But yes, why do dogs
Speaker 2: eat cat turds like they're candy. Do they know something
Speaker 2: we don't.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, cat poo is really stinky, and
Speaker 4: there are you know, pretty much they're supposed to be
Speaker 4: straight carnivores, right, yeah, and so they I mean, it's
Speaker 4: all it's all about what they're eating, right, So it
Speaker 4: smells so good, so you know, to.
Speaker 2: Their dog, of course, I think it's just I think
Speaker 2: it's just odor.
Speaker 4: And then you know, dogs maybe like to be a
Speaker 4: little bad sometimes, But there is some evolutionary history to
Speaker 4: feces eating, especially with a female a bitch with her litter,
Speaker 4: because they they want to conceal their litter, so they'll
Speaker 4: actually eat the feces. And then when before the pups
Speaker 4: can really do anything on their own, they lick their
Speaker 4: heine right to cause them to urinate and defecate, and
Speaker 4: then the moms eat it. So it's really it's really
Speaker 4: I don't know if more females do it than male dogs,
Speaker 4: but they there is a reason why they would eat feces.
Speaker 4: Now the other species, like my dogs eat horse poop,
Speaker 4: they eat rabbit poop, they eat dog poop. They I mean,
Speaker 4: it's terrible. I just you know, it's just really gross,
Speaker 4: especially when they burp. You know, you're just like, oh,
Speaker 4: but anyway, so there is a reason why you know
Speaker 4: the history of it.
Speaker 2: At least you a history of it. So it's to
Speaker 2: conceal there they're dead, and then other patrons have the
Speaker 2: question and I will list their names later. Okay, now
Speaker 2: is later and first time question askers Kyle Wilkinson and
Speaker 2: Ashley Curtin and Elliot Warden want to know why do
Speaker 2: some species of animal eat their own like twice, like
Speaker 2: lagomorphs like rabbits, and certain animals are like, let's have
Speaker 2: that it ag.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So rabbits have two types of feces they have.
Speaker 4: They defecate out vitamins and minerals, and so they had
Speaker 4: to actually eat that in order to absorb it. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure if they have to. I don't know the
Speaker 4: whole biology behind them. If they have to actually like
Speaker 4: their body has to break it down a little bit
Speaker 4: before they can actually ingest it, so they have to eat.
Speaker 2: They have to eat it. Then then they have another
Speaker 2: kind of defication, which is like the waste product. Man.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they're excited because they are their own
Speaker 2: vending machine, or if they're like Why do we have
Speaker 2: to eat our own shit? Why no one else has
Speaker 2: to eat their own shit other than some of us, Like, I.
Speaker 4: Wonder this good thing? We're so cute. I mean, you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know why why that would be. And except
Speaker 4: for their digestive system maybe is not as efficient or
Speaker 4: you know, able to absorb some of those nutrients.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they have to you know, eat it, yeah
Speaker 2: boop leftovers. Yeah, you know, my mom calls leftovers French cooking.
Speaker 2: She calls it deja vous. They're growing French tonight, so
Speaker 2: I guess they just have a lot of leftovers. Yes. Wow,
Speaker 2: this episode learn a lot of folks, such as the
Speaker 2: Little Nugget, that rabbits don't just eat their poo. They
Speaker 2: eat special hindgut fermented and very nutrient rich poohs called sikatropes,
Speaker 2: which usually are dark and lumped together and look kind
Speaker 2: of like a BlackBerry, but made of dark pooh, and
Speaker 2: according to one rabbit care site, ciccotropes are soft, sticky,
Speaker 2: and pungent, and usually eaten directly from the anus, so
Speaker 2: you won't often see them at a sight out of mind. Please,
Speaker 2: dear Lord Abigail Irvin Penner, first time question asker asked
Speaker 2: why do different species have different scented poop? Like a
Speaker 2: cat poop candle would smell so different than a dog
Speaker 2: poop candle than a human poop candle, but all cat
Speaker 2: smells the same and all dog poop smells the same.
Speaker 2: Is that just dietary? Do you think? I?
Speaker 4: Definitely, my I can tell which dog left the pile.
Speaker 4: There is definitely an odor difference. But yeah, again it's
Speaker 4: it's it's about the microbes and the gut and what
Speaker 4: they're eating for sure. Mmm.
Speaker 2: God, I hope no one ever makes a cat poop candle. God,
Speaker 2: do not want never anyone.
Speaker 4: That's the reason why they bury it, right, yeah, amad?
Speaker 2: First time question asker wants to know how full of
Speaker 2: poop are we exactly at any given point in time?
Speaker 2: Do you think, wow, how much poop.
Speaker 6: Is in us?
Speaker 4: I just think about those colonoscopes and how much liquid
Speaker 4: you have to actually drink to clear it out.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I can't remember how long the intestence is, like
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty feet or something ridiculous. And so
Speaker 4: if you're not eating a lot of table you know
Speaker 4: they could be in there for a while, I think, so, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Isn't it crazy to think whenever you're just like sitting
Speaker 2: in a get a party, that there's a ton of
Speaker 2: pooh there? But it's just in bodies.
Speaker 4: I just I try not to think about it, especially
Speaker 4: you know, on the airplane when you're all stuck.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I was on an airplane this morning. Yes, oh,
Speaker 2: thought about that. Mm hmm ps. I look this up,
Speaker 2: and for every one hundred pounds of body weight, you
Speaker 2: make about a half pound of solid waste a day.
Speaker 2: But I saw one Reddit post, I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: I looked for one from a guy who, per doctor's orders,
Speaker 2: was taking a pre colonoscopede what he called military grade laxative,
Speaker 2: and though fully hydrated, he says he offloaded eight.
Speaker 3: Pounds of cargo.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: This next question was also asked by Jennifer Tran. A
Speaker 2: few people had questions, including Karen Elliott, about civet pooh coffee,
Speaker 2: like what happens in seeds and when coffee beans have
Speaker 2: to pass through? Right?
Speaker 4: So, some seeds I guess they have I don't know much,
Speaker 4: but they have like the outer coating that has to
Speaker 4: be broken down, and so I guess the digestive system
Speaker 4: of some of these species. It's really necessary for a
Speaker 4: lot of plants actually to have their seeds ingested and
Speaker 4: then defecated, so it sort of breaks apart the outside
Speaker 4: to help them germanate.
Speaker 2: Oh, and then question about a lot of people had
Speaker 2: questions about positioning. Monica Schneider said, I've heard that squatting
Speaker 2: is the optimal position for our digestive system. I'm picturing
Speaker 2: my dog. How did toilets evolve to be so upright?
Speaker 4: Or?
Speaker 2: Mainly like, should should we as primates? Should we be
Speaker 2: squatting more?
Speaker 4: It's the cultural thing, I think, because you go to
Speaker 4: Africa and you're squatting, you know, it's a porcelain squatter.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know you're squatting, you know. And so
Speaker 4: I've heard that you're supposed to squat Do.
Speaker 2: Other primates, chimpanzees, apes are the squatting? Yeah, they're squatting. Yah, yep,
Speaker 2: They're definitely not sitting on a ceramic bowl reading a phone. Oh,
Speaker 2: sid got Pujart wants to know does any animal have
Speaker 2: nice smelling poop? Actually?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, the giant panda has poo that smells like tea.
Speaker 2: They're eating bamboo.
Speaker 4: It literally smells like tea when you know, here we were,
Speaker 4: we freeze dry poop sometimes, and some lucky scientists was
Speaker 4: freezes drying his giant panda poo while I was freeze
Speaker 4: driving my fishing cat poo. So yes, uh, giant panda
Speaker 4: smells like tea.
Speaker 2: Ah did that change your relationship to tea?
Speaker 4: Uh? No, But I really kind of despise the giant
Speaker 4: pandaf you know, all these things, certain things about them,
Speaker 4: even though they'd been very successful program right, they dropped
Speaker 4: there in danger species status and stuff. So but yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just like one more thing where you know, giant
Speaker 4: pana got a lot of funding because of the way
Speaker 4: they look and their icon for a while ife conservation,
Speaker 4: and then something like a fishing cat or a blackfooted ferret,
Speaker 4: which is you know, smaller and less known, you tend
Speaker 4: to get less funding, you know. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: even their pooh smells good.
Speaker 2: I love it. Fann has got haters, makes sense? This
Speaker 2: is gonna be broadcasted. No, no, it's hilarious. Vin Retti
Speaker 2: wants to know. And several people ask this question the
Speaker 2: Bristol stool scale. Have you heard of it? Where it's
Speaker 2: like I guess certain consistencies. Yes. This was also asked
Speaker 2: by Hailey Temple, who called the Bristol stool scale the
Speaker 2: best thing in the universe. And well, that might be
Speaker 2: a little hyperbolic, Hailey. It's a great guide for people
Speaker 2: with IBS or problem poos to communicate to doctors or
Speaker 2: friends in the group chat.
Speaker 3: None of my business.
Speaker 2: But it features types one through seven interdly. So number
Speaker 2: one is separate hard lumps like nuts, two is sausage shaped,
Speaker 2: but lumpy four is snakelike. We've also got some soft blobs,
Speaker 2: some fluff, and finally number seven entirely liquid. Oh. Yes,
Speaker 2: the Bristol Scale. So who was this genius doctor Bristol. Well,
Speaker 2: sadly he exists only in our minds, brown eye. This
Speaker 2: iconic piece of medical communication was the brainchild of doctors
Speaker 2: Stephen Lewis and Ken Heaton, who drew it up at
Speaker 2: a teaching hospital in Bristol, England. And I don't know
Speaker 2: why they didn't jump on the pr opportunity to name
Speaker 2: it the Lewis Heaton stool Scale. Yuh huh, Yeah, is
Speaker 2: that the same for different animals? Are just a human thing?
Speaker 4: Well, it depends on the animal what their their normal
Speaker 4: texture should be, right, and then yes, any kind of
Speaker 4: variation from that, you know, is it dietary?
Speaker 2: Is it illness? It's definitely an indicator of health.
Speaker 4: M hm.
Speaker 2: Do other species look at their chuck out their poops?
Speaker 4: Well there, but right, so the rhinos are coming in
Speaker 4: and check out everybody's poop in particular. Yeah, no, they're
Speaker 4: all interested. And then you know, the chimpanzees are coming
Speaker 4: to check it out, and so they're eating what's in it?
Speaker 4: Don't ever put corn in there?
Speaker 2: Oh, actually, I'm glad you mentioned it. Definitely had a
Speaker 2: corn question or two. Casey new Haven wants to know
Speaker 2: what's up with corn and why don't we properly digest it?
Speaker 2: And uh so another person had the same question, which
Speaker 2: is hilarious.
Speaker 3: I'll find them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of a lot of species.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's just like the fiber the
Speaker 4: cellular nature of corn that makes it not as digestible
Speaker 4: without being processed, but we use it to mark a
Speaker 4: lot of feces. Not a lot of animals can digest corn.
Speaker 2: So really yeah, Melissa Cross had that question too. So
Speaker 2: it's so if you see kernels, there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with you at all. Maybe Yeah. Alison
Speaker 2: Hughes wants to know what is up with fecal transplants.
Speaker 2: Is this just a fad in humans or humans getting these?
Speaker 2: Where are other animals getting these done too? Like do
Speaker 2: other animals eat others poop to get the microbiome?
Speaker 4: So I think this actually came from the cattle industry. Oh,
Speaker 4: because they have what do you call a fiscalated cows
Speaker 4: and it's actually.
Speaker 2: Like a porthole.
Speaker 4: So they've sewn on the cow because the rooman bumps
Speaker 4: up right to the body wall and you can do
Speaker 4: a surgery and then you have a hole right into
Speaker 4: the rooman pus.
Speaker 2: The rouman is the first of four stomach chambers and
Speaker 2: ruminants and in cows. Are you ready for this? It
Speaker 2: can hold up to forty gallons of sloshy chewed up
Speaker 2: grass that ferments like your roommate's kombucha experiment, and it vets.
Speaker 2: Schools like you see Davis and Rachel's alma mater, Clemson,
Speaker 2: they'll often have cows with an open porthole in its
Speaker 2: belly into which you can insert a gloved arm.
Speaker 4: They make you make the cow swallow a pill, and
Speaker 4: you have to catch it as it comes into the room.
Speaker 4: And that's just so you're reaching in there with all
Speaker 4: the room and fluid is churning. I mean, it's like squeezing,
Speaker 4: you know. That's they I have to digest their their
Speaker 4: the forage that way, and so it's like coming out
Speaker 4: in your hair and you're like oh, you're like ah,
Speaker 4: reaching because you can get an a if you catch
Speaker 4: this pill coming through. But so when they give the
Speaker 4: cows that they cattle and other rumen, it's in particular
Speaker 4: really need that those bacteria, those microtcrobes to digest their food,
Speaker 4: and so if you give them antibiotics, that wipes it out,
Speaker 4: and so they literally will take it out of the
Speaker 4: rooman from the fisculated cow, the healthy cow, and put
Speaker 4: it into the others. I mean, I think they'll they'll
Speaker 4: put it in a pill. They'll have them swallow it too,
Speaker 4: like we would too.
Speaker 2: But they're learning so much.
Speaker 4: This is not my science, but micro microbial ecology and
Speaker 4: the relationship between our health, our even our stress responses
Speaker 4: with these gut microbes. It is really important and they're
Speaker 4: learning all this information. I mean, I think it's really valuable.
Speaker 4: It's not just a fad. It's something that we're going
Speaker 4: to learn more and more about because we're learning how
Speaker 4: these microbes control a lot of our responses.
Speaker 2: See the microbiology episode with UCLA professor doctor Elaine Shaw,
Speaker 2: who is a leader in studying how our guts at
Speaker 2: butts affect our brains. Yeah, and do you find that
Speaker 2: studying cortisol and studying stress hormones in animals, do you
Speaker 2: ever find yourself relating that at all to your stress
Speaker 2: response or if you're looking sort of like how certain
Speaker 2: animals might be stressed when they're lonely or when they're changed.
Speaker 4: Habitats, or Yeah, we look at that because we want
Speaker 4: to make sure we minimize stress, and we look at
Speaker 4: what I found is transportation is one of the highest stressors.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can relate to that today. Literally have been
Speaker 2: on a plane all day, like got it at three
Speaker 2: in the morning to catch a flight in the snow.
Speaker 2: Oh god. And so it's very stressful.
Speaker 4: Even like you know, we have the Brookvalds real close
Speaker 4: to us, and it's like less than twenty miles away,
Speaker 4: but of course there's Chicago traffic. But even coming from
Speaker 4: that short distance is a stressor, and so we learn
Speaker 4: about when animals are particularly stressed during this process. Because
Speaker 4: we have to bring in new individuals, we have to
Speaker 4: share them between zoos in order to maintain the genetic
Speaker 4: health of these species.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned that you live in Indiana, sixty miles
Speaker 2: from the Chicago Zoo. Do you ever think about that
Speaker 2: during your.
Speaker 4: Community It's like, it's like my time by myself because
Speaker 4: when I get home, the dogs want me, the ponies
Speaker 4: want me, the cat, well, the cat, yes, no, the
Speaker 4: cat does want me to and my six year old
Speaker 4: son wants attention. They all want attention. They all want
Speaker 4: food and they all want it now. And so like
Speaker 4: I'm go, go go. So the hour and a half
Speaker 4: I spend in.
Speaker 2: The car, it's actually calming.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is like my my alone time. And so
Speaker 4: I knew what I was getting into when I moved
Speaker 4: that far. But you know, if you want to have
Speaker 4: your ponies in the backyard, you have to live so
Speaker 4: far away from the city.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's great that you have a
Speaker 2: balance at both. My job, you know, is you get
Speaker 2: more and more advanced in your career, you tend to.
Speaker 4: Get more further away from like what you loved about
Speaker 4: it in the beginning, you know, like I love working
Speaker 4: the lab, I love working with the animals, and so
Speaker 4: to get my animal fixed, I get it.
Speaker 2: At home, even if it's just shovelling poop, which I
Speaker 2: do a lot of. This next one was asked by
Speaker 2: Isabel Bie Holper and Wing Christina Weaver Joe Weinhoffer, like,
Speaker 2: why do animals have such different shapes? Why do rabbits
Speaker 2: poop pebbles? And huh and others are bigger ones, Like
Speaker 2: what's going on there?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: You know, I've been asked that question before.
Speaker 4: I sho should have looked it up at Yeah, they
Speaker 4: all have their different shapes, and like I said, we
Speaker 4: even individuals have their own special kind of shapes, you know,
Speaker 4: like horses kind of have the kidney bean shape, and
Speaker 4: then there's pellets and it must be related to their diet.
Speaker 4: They cause thems to do that and the passage rate
Speaker 4: through the gut system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so funny. If you ever see a like
Speaker 2: a goat shit, it's just like a sock full of
Speaker 2: pebbles being inside out.
Speaker 4: Yeah what Yeah, and it is drop it and they
Speaker 4: keep going and like not even like anything happened, and
Speaker 4: no one else thinks anything happens, I know, just not
Speaker 4: a big deal at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, I look this up and one theory of pebble
Speaker 2: poos is that the more likely an animal is to
Speaker 2: be prey, the more risky it is to go take
Speaker 2: a drink of water, and the more water their body
Speaker 2: wants to conserve, producing number two's that are number ones
Speaker 2: on the Bristol stool scale. Separate heart lumps like nuts?
Speaker 3: Is that nuts?
Speaker 2: Okay? Laura Springer wants to know what is the coolest
Speaker 2: or most fascinating thing you've ever found out about an
Speaker 2: animal from looking at its poop? Any just bananas, discoveries
Speaker 2: that you've made that really surprised you.
Speaker 4: A lot of times, particularly what's our our animals here
Speaker 4: at the zoo like our like our hairy sechwan talkin
Speaker 4: it's a giant goat like species from Asia. And you know,
Speaker 4: it's very hard to tell when they're pregnant, you know,
Speaker 4: and so like I am like the first one to know,
Speaker 4: you know, at the zoo when animals are pregnant, that
Speaker 4: is the coolest thing.
Speaker 2: We're like a doctor's office.
Speaker 4: We're all like hush hush, And even when people have
Speaker 4: like no clue, and I, of course immediately tell them
Speaker 4: because you know, when you know we're pregnant, and animals a pregnant,
Speaker 4: you can't give them certain medications and stuff, so they
Speaker 4: need to know, you know, immediately that this is this
Speaker 4: is what happens.
Speaker 2: So it's often that we are learning things.
Speaker 4: That no one else has learned before, and that that
Speaker 4: keeps your job exciting and fresh and willing to work
Speaker 4: with pooh every.
Speaker 2: Day for aquatic animals and amphibians. Rachel also has pioneered
Speaker 2: ways of measuring hormones with skin secretion samples, which she
Speaker 2: calls frog swabs, and she says that's much easier than
Speaker 2: hanging on to a toad waiting for it to unload
Speaker 2: on you. I've seen a video of a toad drop
Speaker 2: in a log and wow, poop is pretty big, giant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the problem is they don't do it often enough,
Speaker 4: or sometimes for us, they're doing it in the water,
Speaker 4: and so then I'm just like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who knows what's in there?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of water, Heather Dunsmore wants to know when
Speaker 2: we're in the ocean or a lake, are we just
Speaker 2: swimming in a bunch of fish poop DoD dogs.
Speaker 4: Yes, they definitely poop in the water, so you are
Speaker 4: swimming with poop, but it's hopefully diluted out and then
Speaker 4: it becomes like sediment and drops.
Speaker 2: To the ground. That's called marine snow.
Speaker 4: After a while, it mayce kind of swirl around a
Speaker 4: little bit, so you know, don't swallow water. But then
Speaker 4: it's actually going to go to the bottom, and then
Speaker 4: other things are going to eat it.
Speaker 2: It's just dinner, sir. Yeah, it's a food cycle, right,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just like lunch confetti. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: like your dog's eating other pooh. Have you seen any
Speaker 2: of those videos of whales pooping? Yes, oh boy, yes.
Speaker 4: And actually we published a poop picture at our latest paper.
Speaker 2: On sea otters because seaatters do the same thing.
Speaker 4: It's like a bloom of a poop, and so like,
Speaker 4: how can you study the stress of a sea otter?
Speaker 2: You know, it's really difficult. This professional published academic paper
Speaker 2: about using whisker and hair and blood samples from ottersus
Speaker 2: A full color photo of a Monterey Bay Aquarium otter
Speaker 2: just kind of chilling, looking like a stoned guy in
Speaker 2: an oceanic jacuzzi. But if you look closely, with the
Speaker 2: discerning scientific eye of a scatologist, you will notice a
Speaker 2: yellowish cloud off to it's right. Again, this photo appears
Speaker 2: in doctor Poop's published paper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we totally have a poop picture latest. I mean, like,
Speaker 4: how cool is that? I mean, who who gets to
Speaker 4: do that anymore? You know, putting a poop picture in
Speaker 4: the in their publications.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of not enough people, not enough people
Speaker 2: could grease the wheels with a little ship.
Speaker 4: Well, we had to get her point across. It's very
Speaker 4: hard to get fezis from sea otters.
Speaker 2: So here you go. You're like, this is why we're
Speaker 2: tapping on our veins. We have to Yeah, last questions,
Speaker 2: I always ask uh shittiest thing about your job? This
Speaker 2: is a question I ask of everyone, but for you,
Speaker 2: I actually do mean it, like, what is the hardest
Speaker 2: or most annoying or irk something? What's one thing about
Speaker 2: your job that just sucks.
Speaker 4: Besides the saliva pipetting, like stringing from one tube to another.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that the challenging thing is trying
Speaker 4: to do our science not invasively, you know, because we
Speaker 4: want to understand stressed physiology and you can't obviously stress
Speaker 4: them out for that, and so that's why you develop
Speaker 4: all these different tools to their stressed physiology. So so
Speaker 4: that is very challenging. And then finding funding for these
Speaker 4: lesser known species that really need the attention, you know, like.
Speaker 2: The blackfoot affair.
Speaker 4: We you know, they really we have six to seven
Speaker 4: hundred left in the world, you know, So you know,
Speaker 4: some of that is very challenging. When you know you
Speaker 4: have the giant panda gets like lots of money, you know.
Speaker 2: So I know you feel like Winnie the Pooh in
Speaker 2: a Halloween costume versus a weasel. Yes, exactly, not easy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is it heard of weasel? Yes? Okay, I got to
Speaker 2: do I need a weasel. It's a weasel family. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: would that be a must electologist? What would that be? Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess we got a fine one. Anyone holler hook
Speaker 2: me up with a weasel person. Yeah, yeah, I want
Speaker 2: to learn about weasels. But yeah, so it's getting funding.
Speaker 2: I hear from a lot of scientists it's not their
Speaker 2: favorite part of the job. Yeah. Yeah, and we you know,
Speaker 2: we do. We write a lot of grants here at zoo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because we're a nonprofit, we're a free zoo, and
Speaker 4: so we have to get creative and where our funding
Speaker 4: comes from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I didn't realize that you guys were
Speaker 2: a free zoo, yes, Dame, so, yes, you got to
Speaker 2: make it up other ways. Yes, that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then what do you love about your job as
Speaker 2: a FECs researcher the most, the most job.
Speaker 4: It's really it's really that I can say I'm making
Speaker 4: a difference. We're making a difference with conserving wildlife, whether
Speaker 4: it's you know, small amphibians that don't get a lot
Speaker 4: of tension or ferrets. You know, this is, like I said,
Speaker 4: one of the rarest mammals we have here in North America,
Speaker 4: and you know I work on a couple of those,
Speaker 4: and it's just like we we are figuring out, we're
Speaker 4: finding out why they're having issues breeding or you know,
Speaker 4: even here at the zoo, when our our animals are
Speaker 4: just you know, it's very difficult to put them together.
Speaker 4: Working with the managers so they can help them understand
Speaker 4: their animals, better understand what's going on inside their animals
Speaker 4: so they can respond and take care of their animals
Speaker 4: or put them together when they're ready to breed. That's
Speaker 4: really rewarding when we're successful and you know we have
Speaker 4: a baby rhino or two, you know, coming out, and
Speaker 4: just you know, the rhinos in particular, the black rinders
Speaker 4: are critically in dangered species. You know, there's like five
Speaker 4: thousand a little bit over five thousand in the wild.
Speaker 2: And you know here we've produced.
Speaker 4: Too in the last I don't know, I'm going to
Speaker 4: say since twenty thirteen. And that is really cool and
Speaker 4: I was part of that, and it was it was
Speaker 4: really rewarding to see.
Speaker 2: Those and so feeling like being a poop detective, lets
Speaker 2: you have a little bit more context for what the
Speaker 2: animals are going through, what's best for them?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you know, because you can look at them,
Speaker 4: but you don't necessarily know what's going on inside. And
Speaker 4: that is you know, my skill, you know, poop detective.
Speaker 4: So yeah, and that's what's great about physiology. You can
Speaker 4: really understand how animals are responding to environment.
Speaker 2: Wow, so our hearts aren't on our sleeves, they're in
Speaker 2: our poo. That's right, toilet. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for all the hard and not always great
Speaker 2: smelling work that you do. It's my pleasure. So ask
Speaker 2: smart people crappy questions and you're going to learn so
Speaker 2: much about yourself and others.
Speaker 3: Maybe too much.
Speaker 2: Now, Doctor Rachel Santamier is at Lincoln Park Zoo and
Speaker 2: you can follow them at Lincoln Park Zoo. We are
Speaker 2: at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with
Speaker 2: one L on both, so do come be our friends.
Speaker 2: Ologies Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you
Speaker 2: Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are
Speaker 2: That for managing that. Thank you Aaron Talbert for managing
Speaker 2: the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Emily White and her amazing
Speaker 2: group of transcriptionists work to make sure these episodes are
Speaker 2: available for free. They are at aliward dot com slash
Speaker 2: Ologies Extras. There's also bleeped episodes if you want to
Speaker 2: listen with kids, or with a class or with my parents,
Speaker 2: and there's a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: So thank you to Jared Sleeper of the podcast Make
Speaker 2: Good Bad Brain for assistant editing, and of course lead
Speaker 2: editor Stephen Ray Morris for all the piecing together each
Speaker 2: week he hosts the podcast see Jurassic Rights and the
Speaker 2: per cast and just generally he's a shit now. Nick
Speaker 2: Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you
Speaker 2: stick around past the credits, you know I tell you
Speaker 2: a secret, and this week I'm gonna keep it on theme.
Speaker 2: Don't get too excited. But as a kid, I had
Speaker 2: a hamster named Bacon and she was just skittering across
Speaker 2: on the kitchen counter. She dropped a few little gifts,
Speaker 2: and I had only seen hamster droppings like way after
Speaker 2: the fact, and I just assumed that they came out
Speaker 2: as hard, dry pellets, so I tried to brush them
Speaker 2: into the sink, not realizing that they would just be mushy.
Speaker 2: And so anyway, that's about the time I smeared Pooh
Speaker 2: confetti all over the kitchen counter and learned, wow, hamsters
Speaker 2: comes out just like us. Also, I scrubbed the counter
Speaker 2: pretty hard. I never told my family though, Sorry guys.
Speaker 3: Okay for by.
Speaker 2: Packaderman collegebyology or do zoology, lithology, new Technology, meteorology, normal paradologynthology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 8: Hops.
Speaker 2: He sounds a
Speaker 5: Broads that is one big pile of ship