Scat

Environmental & Science Education

STEM

Behavior

Nature

Edward Hessler

Poop. 

It is a fact of life. 

Everybody poops.

The Conversation has a series titled Curious Kids in which children ask for an expert answer to a question. Here is 9-year old Cora's question who sets a higher bar than me from the outset by using a scientific term..

What can you learn from studying an animal's scat? 

Verity Mathis who studies mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History answered the question. Ms. Mathis includes a short video from the Smithsonian on what can be learned about an animal's health from an examination of their scat.

As you will see a lot can be learned from scat based on the shape, size, content, chemical analysis about diet, health, habits and movement. Scat even has uses in conservation efforts (number of organisms in an area). Mathis includes a tweet showing a dog sniffing the waters of Puget sound for Orca whale scat. In the course of seven years 349 scats from 79 orcas were found.

An interesting question and answered well.