Ologies with Alie Ward - Scatology (POOP) with Rachel Santymire

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

Yep. Here it is. Let’s dive right in ... to poop. Hippo poop. Ferret poop. Octopoop. Dogs. Cats. Yours. The charming and informative Dr. Rachel Santymire -- aka Dr. Poop -- has a background in animal physiology and endocrinology and is elbow deep in dung as a research director at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Dr. Poop sits down with Alie to talk turds and how she uses poo to determine the health and stress of wild and captive animals, plus: poop vs. poo, why some animals poop pellets, muck middens, taking glitter pills, why the Bristol Stool Scale is “the best thing in the universe,” and why the Lincoln Park Zoo has 17 freezers full of dookie. You’re welcome. A donation went to: https://www.lpzoo.org Sponsor links: TakeCareOf.com (code: ologies50); betterhelp.com/ologies More links at alieward.com/ologies/scatology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh hey, it's your old internet dad here with an episode you've all just been chomping at the bit for. Will she go there? You wondered. She went there. Boy, howdy did she. But don't worry. Okay, this one, it doesn't get too gross.

I don't know. What am I talking about? It's so gross. It's an entire episode on Animal Pooh and sometimes ours because we are after all animals. But I tried to just keep it as informative and as illuminating as an entire episode on animal excrement can be. But before number two, number one. I want to let you know everyone, I will be at Calacademy on March 5th, that is this Thursday

in San Francisco. I'll be at First Fridays in LA on March 6th for where there are secrets from the Vault series, South by Southwest EDU on March 11th. Thank you to everyone on patreon.com slash oligies for submitting your questions and for supporting the show. It's as little as 25 cents an episode to get into that club. Each person out there wearing oligies merch and hashtagging it oligies merch so we can repost you.

And of course to everyone rating and making sure that they're subscribed and telling a friend and of course leaving reviews to freshen up my crappy days. Like this one from Maxine Sunshine who says, I am a zookeeper with a cranky cuckaburra that's a bird I looked up, named Cookie who cackles at compliments, finds music miserable and whose hooping is only silenced by the soothing voice of Ally Danward. The oligies podcast has given my ears peace during the hour I spend with Cookie Daily and we have both learned so much. Cookie's favorite episode is of course ornithology, they say.

So Cookie, this one's for you. Let's just roll up our sleeves and just dive right into it. Skeetology. It comes from the Greek for feces. You're welcome. Skeetology is a scientific study or the chemical analysis of feces while copperology is... Skeetology. What?

Okay. So both same. Also, both can mean toilet humor or a special interest in poops in a sexy way. Okay. So for this Skeetology episode we talk a lot about zoo poops and in fact I got a VIP tour in which I saw a freezer that was kind of like a porta potty on Noah's Ark. The coolest thing about our labs maybe is our freezers. Yes.

So this one might be locked but yeah. You got to lock up your poop. Yeah, so you keep our freezers locked. So we have Black Rhino, Pygmy Hippo, Red River Hog who we have some of our octopus stuff in here. We have our Gravy Zebra, Bacterium Hamels, our Draft, our Black Bear, our Japanese McCack, Pygmy Solaris, Diana Monkey, I Tamron, Polar Bear. That's just what lives in this freezer.

No. I have 13 others. We're going to go all around the zoo. We're going to go through this one for you. It's a real poo party. I love that it's like, hey, no food or drink in here, you're like, don't worry about it. What's the word I'm thinking? Like a shawarma.

It just looks like a lot of rolled up shawarma. We have mountain gorillas from Rwanda in here. Never know what we have in our freezer. Wait, was it geese? Yeah, we have goose poop. Poose poop? Yeah, that's in here. I don't know if that's in here or not, but we definitely are doing goose poop.

Eastern Massasaka Rattlesnakes, Snake's Poop. Yes. Not very often, but they poop. More snow leopards, lots of snow leopards. Israeli Jervils. Yes. Jervil poo. Yeah, Jervil poo.

Very small. Lab mice poo. We have Congo, there are probably gorilla samples, little young gorillas, and we have Mountain Gram Red Squirrel samples. That's even more rare than the Blackfoot affair. I think there's only 30 to 40 left in Arizona, yeah. That's amazing. It really looks like if Marie Kondo kept a refrigerator full of shit.

Like it's beautiful in there. So thisologist has earned the nickname Dr. Poop. She wears it with pride. So she got her bachelor's in pre-vet science and her master's in animal physiology at Clemson University and then her PhD in environmental science and policy at George Mason University. And she is the director of the Davy Center for Epidemiology and Endocrinology at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The motto of her program, she says, is, if it defecates, we will study it.

So we took a seat and we talked all about tiny poos, giant poos, pebble poos, pet poos. Whale poos, famous otters, French confections, glitter pills, wombat bricks. What poos says about you and how and why this animal scientist and conservationist analyzes the feces of countless species and loves it. So please curl up for the scoop on this rare science with scatologist Dr. Poop, aka Dr. Rachel Santamire. So shy. I'm like, just pretend it's not there.

Yes, pretend it's an ice cream cone. If you could tell me your first and last name. Rachel Santamire. Got it. AKA Dr. Poop. How long have you been Dr. Poop? I've been Dr. Poop for 13 years, I guess. Yeah.

My parents are so proud. Hey, the doctor in front of anything is great. You're doing great. Literally, Dr. Poop in front of anything. Yeah, in theory, yes. I guess they don't really talk to the bridge club about what I do. And they just say, we're going to zoo. So this place is a zoo.

Now, how did the nickname Dr. Poop come to be? You know, it was really our learning staff trying to get kids excited about the science. And oh, man, kids love poop, right? Parents not so much until they start to hear the science and they realize how cool it is. And then they eventually start getting really excited about the poop. So it's a great marketing strategy for real. Yeah, except for my mom said I was full of shit. So she's got you there.

She's got that to me today. I was like, if you laugh, you laugh. Oh, thanks, mom. You've got to get just the best puns in your email inbox. Yeah, you know, my one of my favorite titles of my talk is how feces say species. Do you think that there's a big difference culturally between poo and poop? No, I don't think so. Maybe poo sounds more cute than poop.

Yeah, because poop is more like an action and poo is kind of like the emoji. OK, so quick aside, I looked this up and poop used to mean to softly break wind. It was on a monopoetic nature. But my guess is that enough people had unhappy accidents and whammo. Boom, language changes, in this case, from a gas to a solid. Also, poo is a relatively new word. It first appeared in the 1950s, just in case you're wondering about the movement of the term. And so tell me about your journey to the Queen of Poop.

They also call me the poop hoarder, right? Because I don't throw any poop away. I keep it and my strategy is just to buy a new freezer every year. And I have like 14 around the zoo and the animal care staff are so nice. They like make room for my new freezers, the facility guys, add new electric school stuff for me. So, but, you know, I, you know, classic story. I loved animals.

We had, you know, dogs and cats growing up. I, like middle school, I started riding horses, so I love horses. And I love to ask people what their favorite animal is, because I don't have one. I love all animals. There were the feathers, their fish, you know, I love rodents, you know. And so I just loved all animals. And my room actually was sort of a zoo because I had parakeets. I had hermit crabs, you know, I had gerbils, you know, I had all these animals in my room.

And I cared for them. I love caring for animals. And in fact, if like the zombie apocalypse happened, that's the only skill I have. I cannot do anything else but shovel poop, basically. And maybe that's also why I'm Dr. Poop. But I started off thinking that if you loved animals, you became a veterinarian. And so in high school, I worked at a vet's office in college. I was in Preventary Science, Animal Science at Clemson University.

And so my goal was to become a veterinarian. And I worked at vet's offices, I cared for animals. And I applied to vet school. I got an interview at Tuskegee University in Alabama. And literally one person in front of me changed my course of my career. I didn't get in, I didn't get in and I didn't know what to do because that was my whole plan. That was everything I'd done built up to that career.

I panicked because, you know, I had student loans, you know, you had to start paying these things off in six months when you're out of school. And what happened was this scientist came down from the National Zoo. His name was Dr. David Wilt, who unfortunately had just passed away. He talked about how he was an animal scientist and how he's applying all these technologies, particularly assisted reproductive technologies like artificial insemination, semen collection and evaluation and cryopreservation to wildlife,

to endangered species like cheetahs and clout of lepers. And I thought, that's what I want to do. I want to do that. And it just so happens, you know, the zoo, the zoo field where we're a little inbred and I somehow connected through Clemson and Smithsonian institution where Dave Wilt was from and started my master's at Clemson and did a zoo project on black howler monkeys. And then I got hired by the Smithsonian to work in their endocrinology lab.

And then I started to do my PhD there and got to work on one of the rarest mammals we have here in North America, the Blackfooted ferret. Just a quick FYI on Blackfooted ferret, the ferret endemic to North America. So because they munch on prairie dogs and prairie dog habitat is now largely like shopping centers, the species got down to only 18 individuals at one point. So for her PhD, Rachel studied their reproduction and still works with breeding programs to get their numbers up. There are only about 700 left on the planet.

So think of your local moviehouse's dome theater and then fill each seat with one North American Blackfooted ferret. Just a little weasel, just a little sock with a face, maybe sitting there watching a costume drama. Imagine that now there are less of those ferrets on planet Earth than would be in a dome theater because we saw a bunch of North American prairie land. And we were like, you know what this needs? A parking lot for a hobby lobby.

Now, did your work with the Blackfooted ferret? Did that kind of introduce you to analyzing poop to find out about endocrinology? Of a species? It did. Yeah. So, you know, the ferret is a mistelid, which is a very stinky species. So you can imagine their feces. Yes, they are pretty stinky. So I started in 1998 at the Smithsonian to work on Blackfooted ferret, looking at reproductive hormones and seeing how they change seasonally

and how they're related to age. And then the other species I started with was the fishing cat. So I don't know if you have a cat, but, you know, cat poop really stinks. Not a good smell. Yeah. And then you combine it with eating only fish. So, yes. So in the Smithsonian, we had the fecal lab. People would leave the fecal lab when I pulled out the fish and cat samples. It was so bad. I mean, like, you know, you know, it's going to smell in the fecal lab.

But when Rachel pulls out those fish and cat samples, people leave. They just can't take it. Oh, naughty. I have I'm very tolerant of poop. Yeah. So I didn't mind so much. But yeah, I got that I was really like a privilege to work on, you know, one of the rarest mammals we have here in North America. And then also another species like the fishing cat.

I mean, what's more unique? You know, this cat that like dive into water to eat fish, you know, that's pretty cool. So not many cats would do that. This woman, not only does she merrily work with poo, she calls it a privilege. So y'all find what you love, bloom where you're planted. Just make sure you're covered in fertilizer. And why do you think you are so tolerant of feces? Um, because I've always taken care of animals, whether it was bird poop,

gerbil poop, dog poop, cat poop, you know, it's, you know, all about the poop, that fish poop. Um, and so horse poop, man. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, I just very tolerant now. The thing, probably the least favorite thing of my job has been saliva. Oh, really? Yes. Saliva. So let me tell you about our pygmy hippo, okay, where, um, they have a breeding recommendation for our two pygmy hippos. And so they wanted to see if they could time when to pair, pair them

together because they're generally solitary animals. And so we try to look at hormones and unfortunately with the pygmy hippo, they like to poop in the water. Oh, and that pretty much ruins my sample because we, there's a hormones in the water, maybe from the fish, from everything else. So, so I needed, you know, a good fecal sample from them. And so we actually tried saliva and the way we do that was we had our female and we would show her corn and she loved corn.

So she would start to salivate and just drool come out and they would take a pipette and they would pipe it off the ground and they put it in a syringe and put it in a test tube for me. And then it would come to the lab and I'd had to pipette it out of the test tube and it literally would just string from one tube to the next. Like, yeah. That's the thing that throws you out. But you know, I'm a mom now, this was before I was a mom and now I'm like,

whatever, you know, I can tolerate anything. But yeah, before that was, I was like, give me poop, please. This, this life is pretty gross. Somewhere there's a doctor spit who just doesn't understand you at all. I'm going to have to look that up. OK, yes, I look this up and there is a doctor spit. So Missouri news station, KY3 interviewed this local legend who is a blues harmonica player.

His name is Dr. Spit. Something like that. You do not get to pick your nickname. Somebody inebriated in the bar decides what your name's going to be. So I did a little more digging and found out, sadly, Dr. Spit, aka Ron Alexander is no longer with us. So blues fans have a little more reason to be blue. But yes, in the wisdom of Dr.

Spit, the nickname chooses you. And now broadly speaking, what is poop? Who poops? Plants don't poop. Animals do. What's happening? What is it? Yeah, there's a book. Everybody poops, right? Everyone poops. And so yeah, so what happens is we're looking for for wildlife into chronology, we're looking at these steroid hormones.

And these hormones are related to reproduction. So we can determine pregnancy. We can determine when the female is receptive or in estrus. And then we can also look at stress, right? And we always think stress is a bad thing, but really stress is a necessary response that we and animals have to deal with situations. And then we have distress, which is the negative stress, but, you know, it could be bullying or something that you don't really is upsetting.

And there's also you stress, which is like riding that roller coaster, being super excited, you know, for our animals is getting enrichment. And so stress is very important. So we we use these steroid hormones to look at that. And so what happens is there's some kind of response, either a stress response or a reproductive response. So like this time of year, the days are starting to lengthen. So a lot of species are long day breeders like horses, for example.

So they're going to start coming into estrus, right? They're going to start getting ready to breed. And so these cues signal the hormones to be released and they circulate in the blood. But for something like stress, I can't really get a blood sample from animals, even from people, because that causes stress itself. Right. So we look for alternative samples. And what's nice is the liver actually functions in the body to make these steroids, which are made from cholesterol.

So they're oily, they're hydrophobic. They add a compound to make them hydrophilic so they can be excreted and urine and feces. Oh, so when we're done with our stress hormones, we're like, get out of here. Yeah. Take the back door. Yeah. Yeah, we continually be responding. That's not a healthy thing, right? Yeah. So they have their purpose, their job, and then the body gets rid of them. And so we take advantage of that.

You know, with human pregnancy tests, you can use urine, right? And that's actually a protein hormone that you're looking for. But for in feces, we're looking at these steroids and it's just really convenient that we can get it from poop because then we don't have to stress the animals out. It's like we're poop detectives because, you know, literally, like, you know, especially here at the zoo, the animal care staff has to pick up the samples. So now they can simply put it in a Ziploc bag, put it in the freezer, and I can come along, we can pick it up, we can thaw it and we can figure out

what's going on inside the animal. And that's so important because this, they have behaviors. But if you've had a cat or a dog, you know that they hide certain things from you. Well, sometimes they can't hide their guilt. You got in the kitty cat's treats while I was going. But you know, other things when, like, for example, they're in pain or anything else, you can't really understand sometimes, maybe they're hiding more.

And so we integrate animal behavior with endocrinology to really look at the physiology, the response that they're having so we can interpret the behavior better and vice versa, too. And so the zookeepers, as long as they're poop scooping, they get in there. They take a little handful, if you will. Yeah. And then put it in a Ziploc. What, just like roll it up like a sausage and pop it at the. Yeah. Well, they usually invert the bag and like grab it, you know,

you know, just like you do with your dog. Yeah. Same thing. Yep. And then how many samples of poo do you think you have? Oh, geez. And you're 17 free. Don't let anybody at the zoo know this. I probably we do about we changed some of our science recently, but in general, we do about eight to 10,000 samples a year.

So much. So that's about, you know, 130,000 samples. If anybody wants to support bio banking, please send us money. Lowe's, we use your freezers. Don't hate us. You know, and so, yeah, but I can't throw them. I can't throw them away because you can't go back in time. And if you want to see how things have changed,

which is really important for zoo, we want our animals continuously and we want to see how they change over time. And so it's important to keep those archive samples. And then I also have lots of other questions as a scientist who are always asking questions, we get them answered. And then we have like 10 more to go with that. And so, yeah, so I just hoard it. Good. Yeah. Good.

But now I switched to we use hair now for hormone analysis. And it gives us a slightly different perspective. There's actually some debate about whether the hair, the steroids in the hair, the hormones in the hair are telling you about what happened when the hair was growing or what or what happened yesterday kind of thing, a more of a cute response. Because unlike most wildlife species, their hair doesn't continually grow like ours. And a lot of the human literature, they're able to cut up the hair and kind of get a timeline of either chemical abuse or poisoning,

you know, all the forensic stuff out there is really cool. And so we took that science and we're applying it to wildlife and looking at stress levels so we can really see kind of what's going on. And in the fecal, the hormones in the feces are telling you what happened yesterday. Hair might be telling you what happened last week or two weeks ago or last month. So yes, both hair and droppings are non-invasive relatively, and they can give you different data. But with turds, you know, it's pretty recent.

Also, let's get gross. Let's zoom in and discuss what doo-doo really is, other than something you usually do not want to look at closely. And now, you've had your hands in every kind of poo, I imagine, from like geese to hippos to cheetahs. What are some commonalities and what are some differences? Like, what is stool? Is it mostly bacteria?

Is it mostly fiber? Like, what is this? Yeah, it's a combination of everything, right? It's just the waste product of what we ate and what's in our system. And so, yeah, it has lots of bacteria, which are sort of our enemy for hormones because it continually needs to break down the hormones if we don't get it in the freezer fast. When you look at all these different species, like elephants or black rhinos,

which we have here at the zoo, it's like all fiber. You're like, how is there any poo in the sample? Or is it just like cut up hay? You know, same with the zebras and horses, you know, it's really like, this looks just like hay with some poop smeared around it. But we can actually look at the poop. When we get so familiar with our animals here at the zoo, our staff can see the poop samples.

And know when the staff have accidentally mixed up the bags because, you know, they all look like a certain, sometimes food item or not. But like, talk and poo kind of looks like little olives. And our different females had like different shapes and size olives. So we knew when they kind of mixed them up, you know, the camels, they have like golf balls. They have golf ball poops. And but the rhinos, of course, have the bowling ball, right?

And so we don't get to, we don't necessarily get the bowling balls. We get part of the bowling balls. But yeah, very fibrous. This imagery will stay on my mind for a while. And then, you know, the, oh, the, the, the apes and the primates, you know, that's just a whole nother story. But is that more like human? Yeah, it's more like human.

It's definitely more, well, I can't say that because the male black rhino feces is pretty stinky. They use a lot of pheromones and odor cues for communication because they're solitary animals. So, um, but yeah, I think one of the worst samples I've had in my life was actually my own dog's poop. He's just really, wow. You're just like, you know, the doors get closed, you know,

from the staff that work on their computers versus the fecal lab staff, you know, or when we do the polar bear, it's a lot of like fish and stuff. That is pretty stinky. Okay. So in a herd of giraffes or a pride of lions or a party of orangutans, I don't know. I'm just going to hope that a group of orangutans is called a party. Actually, hold on.

Okay. I just looked it up and it's a Congress of orangutans, which, wow, I wish our Congresses worked like that. But anyway, how do they figure out who left what behind? But the fecal marker study, this is one of the best things, one of the best papers I publish, I think. It's very practical. But what do you do when you have a whole bunch of individuals together

and you want to sample each individual? It's like, you know, we're going to either have to have a staff member or volunteer that sits there and waits for them to defecate, which could be a long time, dependent on the species, right? And so we devised a way to mark the feces. And so you can give them food coloring and make their feces green. Or usually green and blue come out green. So it's kind of hard to find different colors.

We've fed glitter to our animals, non-toxic glitter, of course. Non-toxic beads, all these different things. Seeds, blueberries will have seeds. Do you know anything that has seeds? So there's a couple issues with this, though. OK, so when you feed them bird seed, like millet, to mark their feces, the house sparrows come and eat it out of the feces before you couldn't fall. Yeah, so, oh, the house sparrows.

Yeah, they eat the seeds out of there. So that kind of, well, that's not a good marker. And then the chimpanzees are probably the worst because... Hang on to your stomachs. Gag triggers ahead. They see that pretty green feces that someone just defecated and then they go eat it. Oh, no chance. And they all eat it so then everyone has green feces.

So you cannot mark a chimpanzee's feces just because everybody else eats it and then everybody else's feces is marked. How did the glitter experiment go? It went pretty well, you know. Some species, you know how the non-toxic glitter has different colors, right? Well, when we fed it to our lions, they basically pooped out silver glitter no matter what color we gave them. But I had a graduate student, Chris Shell, that worked on coyotes.

And he, the coyotes, they actually would still poop out the color of the glitter. They didn't eat all, I don't know, their system didn't eat off the color of the glitter. So he could use multiple glitter colors to mark the different coyote feces, which was awesome. So side note, of course, you can purchase glitter-filled capsules. And of course, people sell them on Etsy as shitter glitter pills. But according to reviews, you got to take a lot of them. And also, some glitter is actually just tiny plastic pieces. So let's just make a pack to not.

Also, speaking of canines, I'm sorry, I had to ask. Well, I have a question. What was your dog's poop doing in the lab? Did you, was that just tracked in on a shoe? Or were you comparing? I use all my animals to develop our methods. So like, we were studying domestic dogs in and around the Sarengeti National Park in Tanzania. The domestic dogs are used for service, right?

They help protect the livestock from predation. The problem with domestic dogs also is that they give diseases like canine distemper or rabies to the wildlife, but also rabies to people. And so we started a vaccination campaign to reduce distemper, which was affecting the lions. And then reduce rabies, which a lot of species including people. And so I had to sort of develop the field methods to take to the Sarengeti, so like we extract the hormones from the dog feces. And so then I was using my dog's feces.

I use my cat's feces. I use my dog's hair, my dog's toenails. We do toenails. The horse, we haven't done horse poop yet, but we've done horse hair, because I just have it. And if we're just kind of trying to develop the methods in the lab, you just, we just need a product, right? We need something to work with.

So yeah, so yeah, we use all my animals. So use what you got. Yeah, right. Do you ever have any humans come to you and say, hey, Dr. Poop, can you see if I'm doing all right? No, we don't do, we don't do any human service stuff though. It's been accidental where we've tried to develop some controls for our hormone assays and use human urine to do that.

And at the time, my technician was pregnant and didn't know it. And, you know, wow, we had some progesterone controls there. So that was accidental. Did you let her know? Oh, she, yeah, she found out. Yeah, she was doing it and she found out and she didn't tell anybody because, you know, you have to wait for a while, of course. And then yeah, so.

What a way to find out. Yeah, what a way to find out. Mm-hmm. Yep. Just a busy day at the office. Yeah, well, hey. And now you mentioned a little bit about bowling ball, rhino. Which is, I'm still boggled by.

Does it really come out like a bowling ball? It does, yes. And then, I don't know if you've ever seen a dog do this where they scrape their back legs after they go to the bathroom. Yes. That's a sign of territoriality. They're marking their territory. And rhinos do that, but they purposely step in their feces and then they walk away

because that's how they mark their territory. They have these little latrines called middens where they come by, they defecate, they stomp in it, they scrape in it and they walk away. Rude. Wow, wow, wow. I don't know what your phone's data plan is, but if you get a hot second, feel free to Google rhino pooping. And you will find we are in good company with hundreds of thousands of people

who have also wanted to watch rhino's shitting in their middens. Which, by the way, is a word which comes from the Scandinavian for muck heap. So one video by YouTuber Zagif Zelyanov shows the moment that a San Diego zoo rhino turns its posterior to the crowd, lifts a tail and averts its floopy pink poop chute. Oops. Letting rumble forth a dozen wet cannonballs of mashed and digested hay and a little liquid trickle at the end, kind of like a delicate bow. When Zagif Zelyanov took this vacation video, I highly doubt he knew that it would be getting

nearly 800,000 views. But here we are. And he's in good company with professional poop doctors. And so, well, actually we're the rude ones because we put camera traps on the latrines because we wanted to get them in the act because it's very important, of course, this is all the all for science, is to know when they defecated. How long has that sample been exposed to the environment? And I already told you that bacteria breaking down the hormones is our nemesis, right?

We want to stop that from happening. And so anyway, so we put the camera traps and it kicks a picture of the rhinos when they're in action. And then we have also the time and date stamp when that sample was left. So we can study them. So we were studying black rhinos in South Africa. We like rarely ever saw rhinos. They're so elusive.

And so those elusive poopers are really challenging. And so you have to get stealth and you have to get these camera traps and figure out where to set them. Now, that's so illegal if it's humans, but if it's rhinos, it's fine. That's right. Exactly. And when it comes to smells, why are some so distinct? It's because of what they eat.

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know what I'm feeding my one dog. It may also just be the bacteria and their gut microbes that are causing this smell. But yes, there is definitely related to food and bacteria. And now when you're doing your lab work, I've seen pictures of you. You're, you're swabbing, you're cutting things. You're, you're stirring them with what looks like a tiny immersion blender.

Is that correct? I call it a special test tube blender. Yes. A homogenizer. A homogenizer is the word. Yes. Is the science word for it, but it's really like if you were going to froth up like a loss. Exactly.

I tell people, that's our field methods. I said, do not use this to make mixed drinks. This is just for feces. Let's keep it separate. Yes. Totally. Feces only. How are you running those assets to figure out like what kind of hormones are in there?

Like do you have, how do you deal with all the data? I guess that's my question. One day at a time. It is overwhelming because we, we, you know, conservation is a crisis science. We are losing species so quickly. And so we all want to work together. We all want to get things done, but it gets overwhelming with all the data. And so, you know, here every month we're collecting samples from our zoo animals.

When we have questions, we're analyzing them. We're graphing them. We're sending them to the managers so that we can work with the managers. I'm helping them manage their animals. And so it, it's, it can be over. It can just be overwhelming, but I have a lot of graduate students. And so it's their responsibility to keep the data all organized and graph it and show it to me and analyze it.

So that helps. That helps having students and staff members too. What's your pure L routine? Do you have a hand sanitizer preference? Or is it like, do you become desensitized like poo's poo? Fine. You have to be careful because there are diseases and feces, parasites, viruses. And so we had to purely remind people that this is feces and you have to be careful.

And so we have, we have lots of protocols. You never, even in your office, eat anything that's hit the ground. There's no five second rule around us for sure. But yeah, we have a dirty lab and we keep feces in a certain place. And it has to be either ziplocked in a bag to be in another place, but, or it's in this, in the fecal lab. And so we have these strict rules to make sure that we don't have any contamination, any spread of diseases and stuff.

So it's really important actually, because, you know, it still is poop though. We're pretty desensitized to it. Do you think that's where the kind of wiring for shame around number two happens? Because it's easy to be like, I gotta go pee, but you would never be like, I'm gonna go take a dump. Like you would never announce that. Like, are there certain animals, does it happen more with primates or social animals that seem more embarrassed about taking a dump?

I don't know about embarrassed, but, you know, they're what I call the elusive poopers. Like cats who bury their feces, right? They hide their feces. Unlike, you know, some ungulates like deer that may walk and poop at the same time, you know, rhinos have a specific location where they're gonna go. They're gonna go to their midden, they're gonna defecate there. Dogs are just kind of, you know, I mean, there might be some personalities that may be a little bit more shy than others.

But, you know, typically the feces, they're either trying to hide that they're there. And so they're gonna cover it up or they're advertising that they're there, right? Or they don't care. So, you know, it just kind of really depends on the species. PS, I asked the internet why humans are ashamed of their own poops and got back everything from our innate desire to avoid parasites, because even deer and sheep and cows do not graze where they plop to the Bible. So Deuteronomy 2312, anyone?

Quote, you must have a place outside the camp to go and relieve yourself. And you must have a digging tool in your equipment so that when you relieve yourself, you can dig a hole and cover up your excrement. So yes, even God politely asked that you drop all deuces downwind and away from the camp kitchen, okay? And when I say you, I'm including raccoons. I think I have a raccoon latrine in my backyard. Ooh, that's so good.

I know, roundworms, right? In the brain. Luckily, it's down the hill for me. Yes. But I was like, who's been pooping in the yard? And I think, and I looked it up and I think it might be a raccoon toilet. Yes, that's my good. I've been cursed with a raccoon toilet.

Yes, yes. So that's a something that you should call a professional for that, right? I would definitely either avoid it or try to bury it or something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Ooh, I was, I got so excited about having raccoon parties. And then I was like, well, that's, I don't want to brain parasite.

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's some, there's some reasons why there's human wildlife conflict, right? And then some other things that we should appreciate nature and engage with nature. But, you know, we also have to make sure that we stay healthy and the animals stay healthy too, right? So we, some of our habits too are bad for them, like leaving trash out. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. We don't want to leave a Vegas style buffet for a record. No, exactly. Oh, um, I wanted to ask, and I asked this couple out of all of us, is there a movie or a TV show that deals with this type of science or poo in general that you feel like really gets it right or wrong? How is the poo emoji? Is the poo emoji on point?

That's part from the eyes. No, and it depends on the species, right? Right. Yeah. That's, you know, that's more kind of a primate poo than a, it's not a ball. It's not, it's not an olive. It's not a, you know, golf ball or a bowling ball or so. Yeah.

That's kind of insular of us to choose a primate poo. Yes. Primates tend to have like the soft serve, like the chocolate soft serve. Do you have a problem going to self-serve yogurt breakfast? No. In fact, I make these, these awesome chocolate mint cookies every Christmas that are shaped like poo, like a little round poo. And, you know, they come from the, you know, the fecal lab, you know, happy holidays.

You're a fecal lab. I put some powdered sugar on there. So, you know, less, less like, you know, poo poo. But, you know, yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's funny. I think it's great. Yeah. Is it, is it, which species does it most resemble?

It's probably more like a camel. Okay. Than anything else. Yeah, because it's just like a little ball. It's a golf ball. I have so many questions from listeners that I'm holding off asking some of them because I know listeners want to ask them. So, can I ask you a Patreon question?

Sure. Okay, good. Okay. But before you're burning poo questions, a quick break. So, each episode we donate to a charity of theologist choosing and the Lincoln Park Zoo of Chicago funds so much great conservation work and remains free to all visitors, which rules. So, Rachel, aka Dr. Poop, would like a donation to go to them.

It's a really beautiful campus. So, do take a stroll around next time you're in the windy city. So, that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now. Okay, let's get to your questions. Okay, questions from patrons. We got close to 324 hours. People want to know about poo.

Sandra Abete just made a comment and just said, what a shitty subject with a poo emoji and also a tongue out emoji, which is like not a good pair if you ask me visually. But the most popular question I would say we got, it was asked by Joe Wienenhofer, Sid, Rachel Weiss, Haley Hullings, Paul Hancock, Jeffrey Doyle, Madeleine Winter, Schmitty Thompson, Toby James, and then first time question askers, Karen Elliott, Bennett Gerber, Kyle Torres, and JJ Pierce.

Everyone wants to know. Karen Elliott's word says, Wombat Poop Square. What the hell is that about? How? Why? What? And Paul Hancock said, how do they make a square poop with what I assume is a round bum hole?

Wow. You know, I actually had no idea that it was square because we don't have a lot of Australian species here. They shit a brick. Yeah. It's so weird. I think something must have gone viral on the internet like a few months ago because I did not know that Wombat's Pooh Square.

Wow. I'll look it up. Yeah. Is that crazy? Yeah, that is crazy because ouch those corners. I know. I know. They can't.

There's no way that they can have a rhombus butthole. And it doesn't like form when it hits the ground and be like, I don't know. I don't know. But I thought people were joshing. I thought they were shitting me, but apparently they're not. Of course, I'm going to have your back side with an explanation here. And this is a pretty new finding.

So in the 50 million years that Wombats have been waddling around the planet, these large potato shaped marsupials have shit mysteries. Until November 2018 when Georgia Tech scientist Dr. Patricia Yang, a fellow scatologist, lead authored on a paper titled, How do Wombats Make Cubed Pooh? So they took the intestines of two Wombats who died from vehicular Womba side. And as another author, David Hu told Science News, quote, we opened up those intestines like it was Christmas.

So they found by blowing up balloons that in the last 8% of the intestines, water is absorbed and the lumps get dry and are shifted around in a way to compress one side and then the other and then boop, very dry square peg shoots out of a round hole. They can pop out up to a hundred of these two centimeter suckers a night and they stack them up in piles to communicate to other Wombats. What is life? Also, color wise, let's talk about it. Sturkel Billion is what browns it down and it's the product of metabolized blood and bile.

So more pale, floaty and quote, offending stool might mean higher fat concentration and faster transit time. It may indicate a pancreatic issue y'all and super dark and or bloody could be signs of internal bleeding or a tumor. So take a peep and then talk to a doc. Probably not a Dr. Pooh at the zoo though. P.S., if yours has ever been like a St. Patty's shade of green and I'm looking at you, Patrons Tara and Jana, it was likely, you ready for this, from eating something with blue food coloring

which breaks down into this very concerning verdant hue. So drink a few liters of Purple Sorus Rex Kool-Aid. Get back to me. Actually, please don't. A lot of people, Megan King, Grace Lauren, Joe Farentino, Logan Kay, Don Swart, Ryan Clark and Emily Crook, first time question askers, Emily and Joe. They want to know why dogs love to snack on poo. What?

Why? Megan King says, why do dogs enjoy eating cat poop so much? They treat them like I treat non-porellis like candies. Also, non-porellis are those flattened chocolate kisses with sprinkles on one side, even though actually the little round sprinkles are the non-porellis and in French that means without equal. But they look like a pile of colorful, hard-shelled deer droppings on a micro scale. But yes, why do dogs eat cat turds like they're candy?

Do they know something we don't? Well, first of all, cat poo is really stinky and they're pretty much, they're supposed to be straight carnivores, right? Yeah. And so they, I mean, it's all about what they're eating, right? So, and it smells so good. So, you know, to the dog, of course, I think it's just, I think it's just odor. And then, you know, dogs maybe like to be a little bad sometimes.

But there is some evolutionary history to feces eating, especially with a female, a bitch with her litter, because they want to conceal their litter. So they'll actually eat the feces. And then when, before the pups can really do anything on their own, they lick their heiny, right, to cause them to urinate and defecate. And then the moms eat it. So it's really, it's really, I don't know if more females do it than male dogs. But they, there is a reason why they would eat feces.

Now, the other species, like my dogs eat horse poop. They eat rabbit poop. They eat dog poop. I mean, it's terrible. I just, you know, it's just really gross. Especially when they burp, you know, you're just like, oh. But anyway, so there is a reason why, you know, some, the history of it, the evolutionary history of it.

So it's to conceal their, their, their dead. And then other patrons have the question, and I will list their names later. Okay, now is later. And first time question askers, Kyle Wilkinson and Ashley Curtin and Elliot Warden want to know, why do some species of animal eat their own, like twice? Like lagomorphs, like rabbits and certain animals are like, let's have it again. Yes.

So rabbits have two types of feces. They have, they defecate out vitamins and minerals. And so they have to actually eat that, that in order to, to absorb it. I'm not sure if they have to, I don't know the whole biology behind it, but if they have to actually, like their body has to break it down a little bit before they can actually ingest it. So they have to eat, they have to eat it. Then they have another kind of defecation, which is like the waste product.

Man, I wonder if they're excited because they are their own vending machine, or if they're like, why do we have to eat our own shit? Why have I, no one else has to eat their own shit other than some of us. Like I wonder. It's a good thing we're so cute. I know. I mean, you know, I don't know why, why that would be. And except for their digestive system, maybe is not as efficient or, you know,

able to absorb some of those nutrients. So they have to, you know, eat it. Yep. Leftovers. Yeah. You know, my mom calls leftovers French cooking. She calls it deja vu. She's a growing French tonight.

So I guess they just have a lot of leftovers. Yes. Wow. This episode learned a lot folks, such as a little nugget that rabbits don't just eat their poo. They eat special hindgut fermented and very nutrient rich poos called cicotropes, which usually are dark and lumped together and look kind of like a blackberry but made of dark poo.

And according to one rabbit care site, cicotropes are soft, sticky and pungent and usually eaten directly from the anus. So you won't often see them at a sight out of mind. Please, dear Lord. Abigail Irvin Penner, first time question asker, asked why do different species have different scented poop like a cat poop candle would smell so different than a dog poop candle than a human poop candle. But all cat smells the same and all dog poop smells the same.

Is that just dietary, do you think? I definitely, I can tell which dog left the pile. There's definitely an odor difference. But yeah, again, it's about the microbes in the gut and what they're eating for sure. God, I hope no one ever makes a cat poop candle. Do not want never anyone. That's the reason why they bury it, right? Yeah.

Ahmaud, first time question asker wants to know how full of poop are we exactly at any given point in time, do you think? Wow. How much poop is in us? I just think about those colonoscopies and how much liquid you had to actually drink to clear it out. I mean, that's a lot. I can't remember how long the intestines is like 120 feet or something ridiculous.

And so if you're not eating a lot of fiber, you know, they could be in there for a while, I think. So yeah. Isn't it crazy to think whenever you're just like sitting in a get a party that there's a ton of poo there, but it's just in bodies? I just, I try not to think about it. Especially, you know, on the airplane when you're all stuck. Oh yeah.

I was on an airplane this morning. Yes. Oh, thought about that. PS, I looked this up and for every 100 pounds of body weight, you make about a half pound of solid waste a day. But I saw one Reddit post, I mean, let's be honest, I looked for one from a guy who per doctor's orders was taking a pre colonoscopy, what he called military grade laxative. And though fully hydrated, he says he offloaded eight pounds of cargo.

Now this next question was also asked by Jennifer Tran. A few people had questions, including Karen Elliot about civet poo coffee. Like what happens in seeds and when coffee beans have to pass through? Right. So some seeds, I guess they have, I don't know much, but they have like the outer coating that has to be broken down. And so I guess the digestive system of some of these species is really necessary for

a lot of plants actually to have their seeds ingested and then defecated. So it sort of breaks apart the outside to help them germinate. And then question about, a lot of people had questions about positioning. Monica Schneider said, I've heard that squatting is the optimal position for our digestive system. I'm picturing my dog. How did toilets evolve to be so upright? Or mainly like, should we, as primates, should we be squatting more? It's a cultural thing, I think, because you go to Africa and you're squatting.

It's a porcelain squatter, but yeah, you're squatting, you know. And so I've heard that you're supposed to squat. Do other primates, chimpanzees, apes, are they squatting? Yeah, they're squatting. They're definitely not sitting on a ceramic bowl, reading a phone. No, they're not. For 20 minutes. Oh, Sid Gopjart wants to know, does any animal have nice smelling poop?

Actually, yes. Yeah? The giant panda has poo that smells like tea. They're eating bamboo. It literally smells like tea when, you know, here we were, we freeze dried poop sometimes. And some lucky scientist was freeze drying his giant panda poo while I was freeze drying my fishing cat poo. Lucky?

So yes, giant panda smells like tea. Did that change your relationship to tea? No, but I really kind of despise the giant panda, you know, of all these things, certain things about them, even though they've been very successful program, right? Yeah. They dropped their endangered species status and stuff. So, but yeah, there's just like one more thing where, you know, a giant panda got a lot of funding because of the way they look and their icon for wildlife conservation.

And then something like a fishing cat or a black-footed ferret, which is, you know, smaller and less known, you tend to get less funding, you know? So I was like, oh, even their poo smells good. I loved it. Panda's got haters. It makes sense. Oh no, this has got to be broadcasted. No, no, it's hilarious.

Vin Reddy wants to know, and several people asked this question, the Bristol stool scale. Have you heard of it where it's like, I guess, certain consistencies? Yes. This was also asked by Hailey Temple, who called the Bristol stool scale the best thing in the universe. And well, that might be a little hyperbolic, Hailey. It's a great guide for people with IBS or problem poos to communicate to doctors

or friends in the group chat. None of my business. But it features types one through seven in turdly firmness. So number one is separate hard lumps, like nuts. Two is sausage-shaped, but lumpy. Four is snake-like. We've also got some soft blobs, some fluff. And finally, number seven, entirely liquid.

Oh, yes, the Bristol scale. So who was this genius Dr. Bristol? Well, sadly, he exists only in our minds, brown eye. This iconic piece of medical communication was the brainchild of doctors Stephen Lewis and Ken Heaton, who drew it up at a teaching hospital in Bristol, England. And I don't know why they didn't jump on the PR opportunity to name it the Lewis Heaton Stool Scale. Yeah, is that the same for different animals or just a human thing?

Well, it depends on the animal what their normal texture should be, right? And then, yes, any kind of variation from that. You know, is it dietary? Is it illness? It's definitely an indicator of health. Do other species look at their, check out their poops? Well, their buddies do, right? So the rhinos are coming in to check out everybody's poop in particular.

Yeah, no, they're all interested. And then, you know, the chimpanzees are coming to check it out. And so they're eating what's in it. Don't ever put corn in there. Oh, actually, I'm glad you mentioned it. Definitely had a corn question or two. Casey Newhaven wants to know, what's up with corn and why don't we properly digest it?

And so another person had the same question, which is hilarious. I'll find them. Yeah, a lot of species. I don't know if it's just like the fiber, the cellular nature of corn that makes it not as digestible without being processed. But we use it to mark a lot of feces. Not a lot of animals can digest corn. Really?

So, yeah. Melissa Crose had that question too. So it's, so if you see kernels, there's nothing wrong with you? Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you at all. Maybe, yeah. Alison Hughes wants to know, what is up with fecal transplants? Is this just a fad in humans or humans getting these, or are other animals getting these done too?

Like, do other animals eat others poop to get the microbiome? So I think this actually came from the cattle industry. Because they have what you call a fisculated cows. And it's actually like a porthole. So they've sewn on the cow because the rumen bumps up right to the body wall. And you can do a surgery and then you have a hole right into the rumen. P.S., the rumen is the first of four stomach chambers in rumenants. And in cows, you ready for this?

It can hold up to 40 gallons of sloshy chewed-up grass that ferments like your roommate's kombucha experiment. And at vet schools like UC Davis and Rachel's Alma Mater Clemson, they'll often have cows with an open porthole in its belly, into which you can insert a gloved arm. They make the cow swallow a pill and you have to catch it as it comes into the rumen. So you're reaching in there with all the rumen fluid is churning. I mean, it's like squeezing.

You know, I have to digest the forage that way. And so it's like coming out in your hair. And you're like, you're like, ah! And you're reaching because you could get an A if you catch this pill coming through. But so when they give the cows, the cattle, another rumenants in particular, really need that those bacteria, those micro microbes to digest their food. And so if you give them antibiotics, that wipes it out.

And so they literally will take it out of the rumen from the fisculated cow, the healthy cow, and put it into the others. I mean, I think they'll put it in a pill. They'll have them swallow it too, like we would too. But they're learning so much. This is not my science, but microbial ecology and the relationship between our health, our even our stress responses with these gut microbes, it is really important.

And they're learning all this information. I mean, I think it's really valuable. It's not just a fad. It's something that we're going to learn more and more about because we're learning how these microbes control a lot of our responses. See the microbiology episode with UCLA professor, Dr. Elaine Xiao, who is a leader in studying how our guts at butts affect our brains. Yeah.

And do you find that studying cortisol and studying stress hormones in animals? Do you ever find yourself relating that at all to your stress response? Or if you're looking at sort of like how certain animals might be stressed when they're lonely or when they're changed habitats or? Yeah, we look at that because we want to make sure we minimize stress. And we look at what I found is transportation is one of the highest stressors. Maybe you can relate to that today. Literally, I've been on a plane all day.

I got up at three in the morning to catch a flight in the snow. Oh, God. And so it's very stressful. Even like, you know, we have the Brookfields real close to us and it's like less than 20 miles away. But of course, there's Chicago traffic. But even coming from that short distance is a stressor. And so we learn about when animals are particularly stressed during this process

because we have to bring in new individuals. We have to share them up between zoos in order to maintain the genetic health of these species. And you mentioned that you live in Indiana 60 miles from the Chicago zoo. Do you ever think about that during your commute? It's like, it's like my time by myself because when I get home, the dogs want me, the ponies want me, the cat. Well, the cat, yes, no, the cat does want me too. And my six year old son wants attention.

They all want attention. They all want food and they all want it now. And so like, I'm go, go, go. So the hour and a half I spent in the car is actually calming. Yeah, that's like my long time. And so I knew what I was getting into when I moved that far. But if you want to have your ponies in the backyard, you have to live so far away from the city.

Yeah, I think it's great that you have a balance of both. My job is you get more and more advanced in your career. You tend to get more further away from what you loved about it in the beginning. I love working the lab. I love working with the animals. And so to get my animal fix, I get it at home, even if it's just shoveling poop, which I do a lot of. This next one was asked by Isabel B. Holper and Wing, Christina Weaver, Joe Weinhofer.

Like, why do animals have such different shapes? Why do rabbits poo pebbles and others are bigger ones? Like, what's going on there? Oh, you know, I've been asked that question before. I should have looked it up. But yeah, they all have their different shapes. And like I said, we even individuals have their own special kind of shapes, you know, like horses kind of have the kidney bean shape.

And and then there's pellets and it must be related to their diet. They cause them to do that and the passage rate through the gut system. Yeah, it's so funny. If you ever see a like a goat shit, it's just like a sock full of pebbles turning inside out. Yeah. They're like, what? Yeah. And they just drop it and they keep going and like not even like anything happened.

And no one else thinks anything happens. I know, just not a big deal at all. Okay, I look this up and one theory of pebble poos is that the more likely an animal is to be prey, the more risky it is to go take a drink of water and the more water their body wants to conserve, producing number twos that are number ones on the Bristol stool scale, separate hard lumps like nuts. Is that nuts? Okay, Laura Springer wants to know what is the coolest or most fascinating thing you've ever

found out about an animal from looking at its poop? Any just bananas discoveries that you've made that really surprised you? A lot of times, particularly with our animals here at the zoo, like our, like our Harry Szechuan talking. It's a giant goat like species from Asia. And, you know, it's very hard to tell when they're pregnant. You know, and so like I am like the first one to know, you know, at the zoo when animals are pregnant, that is the coolest thing.

We're like a doctor's office. We're all like hush hush. And even when people have like no clue, and I of course immediately tell them because, you know, when, you know, we're pregnant and animals are pregnant, you can't give them certain medications and stuff. So they need to know, you know, immediately that this is, this is what happens. So it's often that we are learning things that no one else has learned before. And that, that keeps your job exciting and fresh and willing to work with poo every day.

For aquatic animals and amphibians, Rachel also has pioneered ways of measuring hormones with skin secretion samples, which she calls frog swabs. And she says that's much easier than hanging on to a toad waiting for it to unload on you. I've seen a video of a toad dropping a log and wow. Toad poop is pretty big. Giant. Yeah. But the problem is they don't do it often enough or sometimes for us, they're doing it in the

water. And so then I'm just like, yeah, who knows what's in there. Yeah. Well, speaking of water, Heather Densmore wants to know when we're in the ocean or a lake, are we just swimming in a bunch of fish poop? Yes, they definitely poop in the water. So you are swimming with poop, but it's hopefully diluted out. And then it becomes like sediment and drops to the ground.

That's called marine snow. After a while, it makes kind of swirl around a little bit. So, you know, don't swallow water, but then it's actually going to go to the bottom. And then other things are going to eat it. Oh, it's just dinner surf. Yeah. It's a food cycle, right? Yeah.

It's just like lunch confetti. Yeah. It's just like your dogs eating other poo, right? Have you seen any of those videos of whales pooping? Yes. Oh, boy. Yes. And actually, we published a poo picture in our latest paper on sea otters.

Because sea otters do the same thing. It's like a bloom of poo. Oh, no. And so like, how can you study the stress of a sea otter? You know, it's really difficult. This professional published academic paper about using whisker and hair and blood samples from otters features a full-color photo of a Monterey Bay Aquarium otter just kind of chilling, looking like a stoned guy in an oceanic jacuzzi.

But if you look closely with the discerning scientific guy of a scatologist, you will notice a yellowish cloud off to its right. Again, this photo appears in Dr. Poop's published paper. Yeah, but we totally have a poop picture. I don't know. Our latest, I mean, like, how cool is that? I mean, who gets to do that anymore? You know, putting a poo picture in their publications.

Not a lot of, not enough people. Not enough people could grease the wheels with a little shit thing. Well, we had to get her point across. It's very hard to get feces from sea otters. So here you go. You're like, this is why we're tapping otter veins. We have to. Last questions I always ask, shittiest thing about your job.

This is a question I ask of everyone. But for you, I actually do mean it. Like, what is the hardest or most annoying or irksome thing? What's one thing about your job that just sucks? Besides the saliva, we're like stringing from one tube to another. I mean, I think that the challenging thing is trying to do our science non-invasively, you know, because we want to understand stress physiology, and you can't obviously stress them out for that.

And so that's why you develop all these different tools to study their stress physiology. So that is very challenging. And then finding funding for these lesser known species that really need the attention, you know, like the Blackfoot affair, we, you know, they really, we have six to 700 left in the world, you know. So, you know, some of that is very challenging when, you know, they had the giant panda gets like lots of money, you know. So I know you've got like Winnie the Pooh in a Halloween costume versus a weasel.

Yes, exactly. Not easy. Yeah. Is that a weasel? Yes. Okay. Good. Just I got to do, I need a weasel expert.

Isn't a weasel family? Yeah. Okay. Would that be a mustelatologist? What would that be? Yeah, I guess. We got a fine one. Anyone?

Holler. Hook me up with a weasel person. Yeah. Yeah. I want to learn about weasels. But yeah, so it's getting funding. I hear from a lot of scientists that's not their favorite part of the job. Yeah.

Yeah. And we, you know, we do, we write a lot of grants here at the zoo. Yeah. Because we're a nonprofit. We're a free zoo. And so we have to get creative and where our funding comes from. Yeah. I mean, I didn't realize that you guys were a free zoo.

Yes. Dang. Yeah. So yeah, so you got to make it up other ways. Yes. That makes sense. Yeah. And then what do you love about your job as a feces researcher at the most?

The most I love about my job. It's really, it's really that I can say I'm making a difference. We're, we're making a difference with conserving wildlife, whether it's, you know, small amphibians that don't get a lot of attention or ferrets. You know, this is like I said, one of the rarest mammals we have here in North America. And, you know, I work on a couple of those. And it's just like we, we are figuring out, we're finding out why they're having issues breeding or, you know, or even here at the zoo when our animals are just, you know,

it's very difficult to put them together, working with the managers so they can help them understand their animals better, understand what's going on inside their animals so they can respond and take care of their animals or put them together when they're ready to breed. That's really rewarding when we're successful and, you know, we have a baby rhino or two, you know, coming out and just, you know, the, the rhinos in particular, the black rhinos are a critically endangered species, you know, there's like 5,000, a little bit over 5,000 in the wild. And, you know, here we've produced two in the last, I don't know, I'm going to say, since 2013. That is really cool. And I was part of that. And it was, it was really rewarding to see

those. And so feeling like being a poop detective lets you have a little bit more context for what the animals are going through, what's best for them? Yeah, yeah, you know, because you can look at them, but you don't necessarily know what's going on inside. And that is, you know, my, my skill, you know, a poop detective. So, yeah, and that's what's great about physiology. You can really understand how animals are responding to their environment. Wow. So our hearts aren't on our sleeves, they're in our poo. That's right. Our hearts are in the toilet. Yep. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you so much for all the hard and not always great smelling work that you do. It's my pleasure. So ask smart people crappy questions and you'll learn so much about yourself and others, maybe

too much. Now Dr. Rachel Santamire is at Linkin Park Zoo and you can follow them at Linkin Park Zoo. We are at Allergies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Allie Ward with 1L on both. So do come be our friends. Allergies merch is available at olergiesmerch.com. Thank you, Shannon Feltes and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for managing that. Thank you, Erin Talbert for managing the Allergies podcast Facebook group. Emily White and her amazing group of transcriptionists work to make sure these episodes are available for free. They are at alleyward.com slash Allergies extras. There's also bleeped episodes if you want to listen with kids or with a class or with my parents and there's a link to that in the show notes. So thank you to Jared Sleeper of

the podcast My Good Bad Brain for assistant editing and of course lead editor Stephen Ray Morris for all the piecing together each week. He hosts the podcast See Jurassic Rights and The Percast and just generally he's a shit. Now Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music and if you stick around past the credits you know I tell you a secret and this week I'm gonna keep it on theme. Don't get too excited but as a kid I had a hamster named Bacon and she was just skittering across on the kitchen counter. She dropped a few little gifts and I had only seen hamster droppings like way after the fact and I just assumed that they came out as hard dry pellets. So I tried to brush them into the sink not realizing that they would just be mushy and so anyway

that's about the time I smeared poo confetti all over the kitchen counter and learned wow hamsters comes out just like us. Also I scrubbed the counter pretty hard. I never told my family though. Sorry guys okay bye bye. That is one big pile of shit.