A report on Feces

Skatole is the principal compound responsible for the unpleasant smell of feces.
The molecule hydrogen sulfide contributes to the smell of feces.
A pet waste station in Tucker, Georgia
Cyclosia papilionaris consuming bird droppings
Horse feces
Sign ordering owners to clean up after pets, Houston, Texas, 2011
Bear scat
Bear scat showing consumption of bin bags
The cassowary disperses plant seeds via its feces
Earthworm feces aids in provision of minerals and plant nutrients in an accessible form
Feces from different seabirds.

Not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine.

- Feces
Skatole is the principal compound responsible for the unpleasant smell of feces.

41 related topics with Alpha

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Human anatomy of the anorecturm (anus and rectum)

Defecation

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Human anatomy of the anorecturm (anus and rectum)
The caganer is a defecating figurine in Spanish nativity scenes

Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion, and is a necessary process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces from the digestive tract via the anus.

Animal manure is often a mixture of animal feces and bedding straw, as in this example from a stable.

Manure

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Organic matter that is used as organic fertilizer in agriculture.

Organic matter that is used as organic fertilizer in agriculture.

Animal manure is often a mixture of animal feces and bedding straw, as in this example from a stable.
Skatole is the source of the foul smelling odor of manure.
Concrete reservoirs, one new, and one containing cow manure mixed with water. This is common in rural Hainan Province, China.
Compost containing turkey manure and wood chips from bedding material is dried and then applied to pastures for fertilizer.
Pile of animal manure on a wall.
The women of a neighborhood ward with manure on their way to the field of one of them, Tireli, Mali 1990

Most manure consists of animal feces; other sources include compost and green manure.

A large coprolite of a carnivorous dinosaur found in Harding County, South Dakota, USA. Photo courtesy of the Poozeum

Coprolite

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A large coprolite of a carnivorous dinosaur found in Harding County, South Dakota, USA. Photo courtesy of the Poozeum
A large Miocene coprolite from South Carolina, USA.
A large coprolite (fossilized feces) from South Carolina, USA.
Age: White River Oligocene; Location: Northwest Nebraska; Dimensions: Varies (25 mm X 20 mm); Weight: 8-10 g; Features: Many small inclusions and one has a complete toe bone from a small deer called a leptomeryx.
A Miocene pseudocoprolite from Washington state. Commonly mistaken for coprolites because of their appearance and shape; they are actually of inorganic origin. Scale in mm. See Spencer (1993).

A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces.

Stirling-Motor powered with cow dung in the Technical Collection Hochhut in Frankfurt on Main

Dry dung fuel

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Stirling-Motor powered with cow dung in the Technical Collection Hochhut in Frankfurt on Main
A pile of dung cakes in the village Nihal Singh Wala of District Moga in Punjab
The M.N. Yavari, of Peru built by Thames Iron Works, London in 1861-62 had a Watt steam engine (powered by dried llama dung) until 1914
Drying cow dung fuel
Egyptian women making "Gella" dry animal dung fuel
Huts in a village near Maseru, Lesotho. The fuel being used on the fire is dried cattle dung
Dung cooking fire. Pushkar India.
U.S. soldiers patrolling outside a qalat covered in caked and dried cow dung in an Afghani village
Cow dung fuel was burnt on the Gauchar's Historical Field, India to gauge the direction of air currents
Making Komaya (cow dung fuel in India)
Dung cakes being prepared for fuel on the Ile de Brehat, Brittany, France, c. 1900.
The burning of cow dung cake releases a range of organic and inorganic gases in both gas and particle phases
The burning of cow dung cake releases organic air pollutants over a wide range of volatilities into both gas and particle phases.

Dry dung fuel (or dry manure fuel) is animal feces that has been dried in order to be used as a fuel source.

Human feces photographed in a toilet, shortly after defecation.

Human feces

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Solid or semisolid remains of food that could not be digested or absorbed in the small intestine of humans, but has been further broken down by bacteria in the large intestine.

Solid or semisolid remains of food that could not be digested or absorbed in the small intestine of humans, but has been further broken down by bacteria in the large intestine.

Human feces photographed in a toilet, shortly after defecation.
Fresh feces collected from a child for a drying experiment
Feces after drying in an experiment to determine moisture content

Human feces has similarities to the feces of other animals and varies significantly in appearance (i.e. size, color, texture), according to the state of the diet, digestive system and general health.

Formation of anus in proto- and deuterostomes

Anus

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Opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth.

Opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth.

Formation of anus in proto- and deuterostomes

Its function is to control the expulsion of feces, the residual semi-solid waste that remains after food digestion, which, depending on the type of animal, includes: matter which the animal cannot digest, such as bones; food material after the nutrients have been extracted, for example cellulose or lignin; ingested matter which would be toxic if it remained in the digestive tract; and dead or excess gut bacteria and other endosymbionts.

Permineralized bryozoan from the Devonian of Wisconsin.

Fossil

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Any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

Any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

Permineralized bryozoan from the Devonian of Wisconsin.
External mold of a bivalve from the Logan Formation, Lower Carboniferous, Ohio
Silicified (replaced with silica) fossils from the Road Canyon Formation (Middle Permian of Texas)
Recrystallized scleractinian coral (aragonite to calcite) from the Jurassic of southern Israel
The star-shaped holes (Catellocaula vallata) in this Upper Ordovician bryozoan represent a soft-bodied organism preserved by bioimmuration in the bryozoan skeleton.
Examples of index fossils
Microfossils about 1 mm
The wasp Leptofoenus pittfieldae trapped in Dominican amber, from 20 to 16 million years ago. It is known only from this specimen.
Eroded Jurassic plesiosaur vertebral centrum found in the Lower Cretaceous Faringdon Sponge Gravels in Faringdon, England. An example of a remanié fossil.
A subfossil dodo skeleton
Lower Proterozoic stromatolites from Bolivia, South America
An example of a pseudofossil: Manganese dendrites on a limestone bedding plane from Solnhofen, Germany; scale in mm
Ceratopsian skulls are common in the Dzungarian Gate mountain pass in Asia, an area once famous for gold mines, as well as its endlessly cold winds. This has been attributed to legends of both gryphons and the land of Hyperborea
Fossil shells from the cretaceous era sea urchin, Micraster, were used in medieval times as both shepherd's crowns to protect houses, and as painted fairy loaves by bakers to bring luck to their bread-making.
Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus from the 1834 Czech edition of Cuvier's Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe
Phacopid trilobite Eldredgeops rana crassituberculata. The genus is named after Niles Eldredge.
Crinoid columnals (Isocrinus nicoleti) from the Middle Jurassic Carmel Formation at Mount Carmel Junction, Utah
Carbonized fossil of a possible leech from the Silurian Waukesha Biota of Wisconsin.
Partially coalified axis (branch) of a lycopod from the Devonian of Wisconsin.
Cambrian trace fossils including Rusophycus, made by a trilobite
A coprolite of a carnivorous dinosaur found in southwestern Saskatchewan
Densely packed, subaerial or nearshore trackways (Climactichnites wilsoni) made by a putative, slug-like mollusk on a Cambrian tidal flat
thumb|Marine fossils found high in the Himalayas. Collection of the Abbot of Dhankar Gompa, HP, India
Three small ammonite fossils, each approximately 1.5 cm across
Eocene fossil fish Priscacara liops from the Green River Formation of Wyoming
A permineralized trilobite, Asaphus kowalewskii
Megalodon and Carcharodontosaurus teeth. The latter was found in the Sahara Desert.
Fossil shrimp (Cretaceous)
Petrified wood in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
Petrified cone of Araucaria mirabilis from Patagonia, Argentina dating from the Jurassic Period (approx. 210 Ma)
A fossil gastropod from the Pliocene of Cyprus. A serpulid worm is attached.
Silurian Orthoceras fossil
Eocene fossil flower from Florissant, Colorado
Micraster echinoid fossil from Englandf
Productid brachiopod ventral valve; Roadian, Guadalupian (Middle Permian); Glass Mountains, Texas.
Agatized coral from the Hawthorn Group (Oligocene–Miocene), Florida. An example of preservation by replacement.
Fossils from beaches of the Baltic Sea island of Gotland, placed on paper with 7 mm (0.28 inch) squares
Dinosaur footprints from Torotoro National Park in Bolivia.

Fossils may also consist of the marks left behind by the organism while it was alive, such as animal tracks or feces (coprolites).

Front of abdomen, showing the large intestine, with the stomach and small intestine in gray.

Large intestine

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Last part of the gastrointestinal tract and of the digestive system in vertebrates.

Last part of the gastrointestinal tract and of the digestive system in vertebrates.

Front of abdomen, showing the large intestine, with the stomach and small intestine in gray.
Illustration of the large intestine.
Inner diameters of colon sections
Colonic crypts (intestinal glands) within four tissue sections. The cells have been stained to show a brown-orange color if the cells produce the mitochondrial protein cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (CCOI), and the nuclei of the cells (located at the outer edges of the cells lining the walls of the crypts) are stained blue-gray with haematoxylin. Panels A, B were cut across the long axes of the crypts and panels C, D were cut parallel to the long axes of the crypts. In panel A the bar shows 100 µm and allows an estimate of the frequency of crypts in the colonic epithelium. Panel B includes three crypts in cross-section, each with one segment deficient for CCOI expression and at least one crypt, on the right side, undergoing fission into two crypts. Panel C shows, on the left side, a crypt fissioning into two crypts. Panel D shows typical small clusters of two and three CCOI deficient crypts (the bar shows 50 µm). The images were made from original photomicrographs, but panels A, B and D were also included in an article and illustrations were published with Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License allowing re-use.
Histological section.
Colonoscopy image, splenic flexure, normal mucosa. You can see spleen through it : the black part
Micrograph of normal large instestinal crypts.
Anatomy of normal large intestinal crypts
Intestines
Colon. Deep dissection. Anterior view.

Water is absorbed here and the remaining waste material is stored in the rectum as feces before being removed by defecation.

Heme metabolism

Bilirubin

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Red-orange compound that occurs in the normal catabolic pathway that breaks down heme in vertebrates.

Red-orange compound that occurs in the normal catabolic pathway that breaks down heme in vertebrates.

Heme metabolism

For example, the molecules excreted in the urine differ from those in the feces.

Buckland in 1833

William Buckland

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English theologian who became Dean of Westminster.

English theologian who became Dean of Westminster.

Buckland in 1833
Bust of Buckland in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
William Conybeare drew this cartoon of Buckland poking his head into a prehistoric hyaena den in 1822 to celebrate Buckland's ground breaking analysis of the fossils found in Kirkdale Cave.
Buckland family silhouette
Duria Antiquior – A more Ancient Dorset, 1830 watercolour by Henry De la Beche, based on Buckland's account of Mary Anning's discoveries
Painting by Richard Ansdell

He pioneered the use of fossilised faeces in reconstructing ecosystems, coining the term coprolites.