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The Definitive Guide to Filthy Animal Facts and Falsehoods

Ethan Kocet

A book, co-written by a Virginia Tech biologist, called “The Definitive Guide to Animal Flatulence" became a New York Times best seller last year.  Now its authors are out with their second Definitive Guide, This one called “True or Poo? The Definitive Field Guide to Filthy Animal Facts and Falsehoods.”

Beyond the true and false of it, when it comes to animals and insects there’ s a lot to say about poo.

“You know rabbits will actually eat their own pooh because they gain nutrients from the multiple bouts of digestions,” say Co-author Nick Caruso, a post doc in fish and wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech.

“People with pet rabbits already know this,” he points out --- but would you have thought it was true about poo?

  “Its part of their diet their evolutionary history,” Caruso assures us.

Each entry in this hundred fifty page book, offers a gambit about the creature in question, like this one; “You can see penguin poo from space.” True or Poo?

“True,” confirms Caruso.

Toads give you warts?  “Poo,”  he poo poos.

Clown fish can change their gender from male to female or the other way around?

“That’s true.”

Male sea horses take on a lot of child rearing including actually becoming pregnant with a baby sea horse?

All true, he affirms.

“We think of reproduction in a very strict sense but it’s definitely not, in our species and throughout the animal kingdom and I think that’s a pretty powerful message tha it just varies.”

Caruso never expected to be writing books about the adorable, if disgusting (to us) things animals and insects do. He thought he’d spend his whole career focusing on amphibians. He’s fascinated by Appalachian salamanders.  But now he’s got the popular culture book writing bug.  He and co-writer Dani Rabaiotti ,  an environmental scientist Zoological Society of London, have written not one but two books now, focusing on matter normally not spoken of, that emerges in large quantities from the business end of animals and insects. And the outcome of their focus, shall we say, turns out to be substances that are quite central to a lot of animal life.

“There are species that build their homes out of it. There are many species that use it, which is good, because or else our planet would be covered in it.”

Part of what makes the book so much fun is the humorous illustrations by Ethan Kocet. Like the one that depicts a strange but symbiotic relationship between a certain kind of Southeast Asian squirrel-like mammal and the extremely civilized use it’s found for the inside of a pitcher plant.

“These pitcher plants have evolved with these tree shrews so that the shrews actually use them as toilets. We typically think of pitcher plants as trapping insects. To gain nutrients in areas where it’s pretty nutrient poor, but these pitcher plants have evolved with these tree shrews so that the shrews actually defecate inside the pitcher plants and use them as toilets.”

And while they’re on the throne, they actually get nectar from the plants

Kocet’s drawing in the book is of a tree shrew, sitting on the pitcher plant holding a newspaper with a look on his face like, ‘hey could I get some privacy?  But given what’s in the book, there’s not a lot of shame ruling the animal kingdom.

Nor is there among the authors.  The full title of their first book, a New York Times Best seller in science, is titled, “Does it Fart: The Definitive Guide to Animal Flatulence." Their new book continues, unabashed, their exploration of the doings of the fascinating creatures of this planet we share.

Robbie Harris is based in Blacksburg, covering the New River Valley and southwestern Virginia.