At Animal Ark we are in our slow season but gearing up for a very busy snake avoidance spring and summer.

Press releases and promotional stuff takes time and patience – thankfully I have Jenny and Ziggy capably dealing with all that. I'll stick to cleaning and feeding the animals - from tarantulas to king browns!

All that cleaning up snake and spider scats, poops or whatever you like to call the waste product of animals, gave me the idea for much of the content of this latest newsletter.

It seems all mammals - human, elephant, dog or panda - take around 12 seconds to poo plus or minus 7 seconds (maybe it depends on whether you had curry or not the night before).

They also looked at diets and those creatures with lots of fibre in the diet produced more floaters, with carnivores more likely to have sinkers. Next time you go to the loo maybe take a stopwatch and see how you compare!

Here volunteers dedicate many hours to the rehabilitation and eventual release of these critically endangered birds.

I was at a recent release of 8 such birds at Yanchep. Mike, NAR's black cockatoo Team Leader, said "As our human footprint spreads with development and pollution these poor birds struggle to survive".

It is very uplifting to see these birds fly free again – even though I didn't put in any of the hard work.

Different terms can even be used for the waste of particular species:

• Horse - manure or road apple
• Cattle - cow dung, meadow muffins or cow patties
• Rabbit - pellets
• Bird - droppings
• Birds and bats in large congregations – guano
• Hawks (and other raptors) - mute
• Wild carnivores and sometimes any animal – scat
• Insects such as caterpillars and stick insects - frass
• Otter – spraint
• Worms - castings

Interestingly elephants, hippos, koalas and pandas amongst others are born with sterile intestines and must gain gut bacteria through ingesting parental (usually maternal) faeces.

It is unusual but true that direct human faecal implants (from one person to another) are helping many people improve bowel and intestinal health. In some cases it is reported that this procedure has greatly enhanced the health of recipients if not curing some ailments completely.

Power to the poop!

Many years ago now I was in a studio on a music video shoot involving penguins and the band Queen. As a result of one penguin's loose bowel movement, I can safely assume I am the only man in the world that can claim that his penguin pooped on Freddie Mercury. Really it happened.

Hippos are amazing, huge and potentially very dangerous animals. They have the unusual habit of spraying faeces – with a little high speed tail wagging they manage to propel and spread their liquid poop metres high and wide. This in Hippo land helps a male to mark his territory. Maybe even more remarkably or disturbing is the female's habit of doing the same directly onto a male's face, particularly during the breeding season.

Which takes me back to another film studio incident - on a day filming with a pygmy hippo – this miniature version of its larger relative can do and did exactly the same thing. Emma the hippo decided she just had to go, backed up towards the studio wall and sprayed for her life, her little tail whirling about. A huge area, quite literally from floor to ceiling and at least a couple of metres wide were in a few seconds covered in steaming, smelly dripping muck.

This was a bit embarrassing for me and probably even for Emma – but the show's producer who was right there to witness it thought it was just hilarious and decided to call on his radio for the cleaner to come to the studio with a bucket as soon as possible. His face when he arrived with just a bucket and mop was a picture, we all laughed so much. I don't remember what happened next but either many men with mops were required or the whole wall hosed down.

Paleoscatologists can study coprolites and learn about the diet and digestive systems of now extinct animals. Pictured is probably a very nice Turtle coprolite from Madagascar. It was sold to me as dolphin poop - I am no Paleoscatologist but I am convinced it is the more common turtle excreta.

The upper part of its body is camouflaged but from below, where no predator would view it, the heart is plainly visible. You may even see it's poo – frog poo if you were wondering - depending on size of frog looks a bit like an olive pip.

Why not pop along and meet Animal Ark and some of the Australian wildlife at Native Animal Rescue (NAR) in Malaga on Sunday 9 July, 10am to 3pm.

And come along to the WAHS Reptile Expo at Claremont Showgrounds on Sunday 16 July, 10am to 5pm. Animal Ark will be at both events – all day!

Native dung beetles typically feast on and process marsupial waste, produced from wallaby and kangaroo species, and find it difficult to process moister waste products from our European farm animals, including cattle, sheep and horses. There are in fact several native species of dung beetle that have been found to consume these moister poos, however introduced specialized dung beetles are faster and have been doing a great clean up job too! Dung beetles, in large numbers, can bury cow patties or meadow muffins within 10 to 30 hours. Not only does the dung beetle remove the excess and sometimes unwanted waste, but burying the poo benefits the land, pasture, soil and water in many ways. Additionally, the consumption of cow patties has resulted in a natural biological control of the bush fly, notably reducing their numbers and making farmers very happy!

On average dung beetles live to around 3 years of age and are 0.5cm to 3cm in length. One of the largest is the Elephant dung beetle (Heliocopris dominus) - up to 6.5cm long. Although they are often small creatures, one dung beetle in relation to its size is both the world's strongest insect and, wait for it… the world's strongest animal! Who knew?? The male Taurus scarab (Onthaphagus taurus) can pull a dung ball 1,141 times its own bodyweight! This is equivalent to a 68kg human pulling a road train!

Dung beetles can either be dwellers, rollers or tunnellers. If you are a dweller dung beetle, you would live inside the poo itself, females laying their eggs inside the poo and the larvae that hatch will feed on the poo 'in house'. Rollers are the typical dung beetles you see on TV or in movies, they shape a section of a poo into a ball and commence rolling the now round poo ball away from the pile. The dung beetle will then bury the dung, storing it to eat later and/or to lay eggs in. Tunnellers will dig a tunnel under the poo, usually in a male-female pair, the male brings down poo into the tunnel, which the female sorts and stores.

Words by Ziggy at Animal Ark