Coprophagia

Not to be confused with Coprographia.

A female Oriental latrine fly (Chrysomya megacephala) feeds on feces

Coprophagia (/ˌkɒprəˈfeɪdʒiə/) or coprophagy (/kəˈprɒfədʒi/) is the consumption of feces. The word is derived from the Greek κόπρος copros, "feces" and φαγεῖν phagein, "to eat". Coprophagy refers to many kinds of feces-eating, including eating feces of other species (heterospecifics), of other individuals (allocoprophagy), or one's own (autocoprophagy) – those once deposited or taken directly from the anus.

In humans, coprophagia has been described since the late 19th century in individuals with mental illnesses and in unconventional sexual acts. Some animal species eat feces as a normal behavior, in particular lagomorphs, which do so to allow tough plant materials to be digested more thoroughly by passing twice through the digestive tract. Other species may eat feces under certain conditions.

Coprophagia by humans

As a supposed medical treatment

Ttongsul, or "feces wine", has been used in old Korean medicine. Ideally, a child's excrement is used in the preparation with alcohol content up to 9% by volume.

Centuries ago, physicians tasted their patients' feces, to better judge their state and condition.

Lewin reported, "... consumption of fresh, warm camel feces has been recommended by Bedouins as a remedy for bacterial dysentery; its efficacy (probably attributable to the antibiotic subtilisin from Bacillus subtilis) was anecdotally confirmed by German soldiers in Africa during World War II".

As a paraphilia

Coprophilia is a paraphilia (DSM-5), where the object of sexual interest is feces, and may be associated with coprophagia. Coprophagia is sometimes depicted in pornography, usually under the term "scat" (from scatology). A notorious example of this is the pornographic shock video 2 Girls 1 Cup. The 120 Days of Sodom, a 1785 novel by Marquis de Sade, is full of detailed descriptions of erotic sadomasochistic coprophagia. Austrian actor and pornographic director Simon Thaur created the series "Avantgarde Extreme" and "Portrait Extrem", which explores coprophagy, coprophilia, and urolagnia. GG Allin, an American shock rock singer-songwriter, often featured coprophagy in his performances.

Coprophagia has also been observed in some people with schizophrenia and pica.

In literature

François Rabelais, in his classic Gargantua and Pantagruel, often employs the expression mâche-merde or mâchemerde, meaning "shit-chewer". This, in turn, comes from the Greek comedians Aristophanes and particularly Menander, who often use the term skatophagos (σκατοφάγος).

Thomas Pynchon's award-winning 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow contains a detailed scene of coprophagia.

Modern Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin's novel Norma describes a society where coprophagia is institutionalized and mandatory.

In visual media

In the Adult Swim show Rick and Morty, coprophagia is an issue with which the family therapist assists other patients. In the episode "Pickle Rick", the eccentric scientist Rick Sanchez turns himself into a pickle just as his family and he are scheduled to attend a therapy session. Before the session, the family is waiting outside when a teacher at Rick's grandchildren's school comes out and asks how long the family has been eating poop. On the door to the office, the doctor's sign reads "Dr. Wong Family Therapist Coprophagia Recovery". During the session, Rick's grandson Morty notices a binder on the therapist's coffee table. Morty decides to pick it up and look inside. Inside the binder are pictures of people eating poop (the audience never sees these images) as Morty asks with a repulsed look as to why those pictures are in the binder. When the family leaves, the doctor asks them if they know anybody with issues eating poop to refer them to her.

Coprophagia by nonhuman animals

By invertebrates

Two Adonis blue butterflies feeding on a lump of feces

Coprophagous insects consume and redigest the feces of large animals. These feces contain substantial amounts of semidigested food, particularly in the case of herbivores, owing to the inefficiency of the large animals' digestive systems. Thousands of species of coprophagous insects are known, especially among the orders Diptera and Coleoptera. Examples of such fies are Scathophaga stercoraria and Sepsis cynipsea, dung flies commonly found in Europe around cattle droppings. Among beetles, dung beetles are a diverse lineage, many of which feed on the microorganism-rich liquid component of mammals' dung, and lay their eggs in balls composed mainly of the remaining fibrous material.

Termites eat one another's feces as a means of obtaining their hindgut protists. Termites and protists have a symbiotic relationship (e.g. with the protozoan that allows the termites to digest the cellulose in their diet). For example, in one group of termites, a three-way symbiotic relationship exists; termites of the family Rhinotermitidae, cellulolytic protists of the genus Pseudotrichonympha in the guts of these termites, and intracellular bacterial symbionts of the protists.

By vertebrates

Domesticated and wild mammals are sometimes coprophagic, and in some species, this forms an essential part of their method of digesting tough plant material.

Dogs may be coprophagic, possibly to rebalance their microbiome or to ingest missing nutrients.

Species within the Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, and pikas) produce two types of fecal pellets: hard ones, and soft ones called cecotropes. Animals in these species reingest their cecotropes, to extract further nutrients. Cecotropes derive from chewed plant material that collects in the cecum, a chamber between the large and small intestine, containing large quantities of symbiotic bacteria that help with the digestion of cellulose and also produce certain B vitamins. After excretion of the soft cecotrope, it is again eaten whole by the animal and redigested in a special part of the stomach. The pellets remain intact for up to six hours in the stomach; the bacteria within continue to digest the plant carbohydrates. This double-digestion process enables these animals to extract nutrients that they may have missed during the first passage through the gut, as well as the nutrients formed by the microbial activity. This process serves the same purpose within these animals as rumination (cud-chewing) does in cattle and sheep.

Cattle in the United States are often fed chicken litter. Concerns have arisen that the practice of feeding chicken litter to cattle could lead to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) because of the crushed bone meal in chicken feed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates this practice by attempting to prevent the introduction of any part of cattle brain or spinal cord into livestock feed. Other countries, such as Canada, have banned chicken litter for use as a livestock feed.

The young of elephants, giant pandas, koalas, and hippos eat the feces of their mothers or other animals in the herd, to obtain the bacteria required to properly digest vegetation found in their ecosystems. When such animals are born, their intestines are sterile and do not contain these bacteria. Without doing this, they would be unable to obtain any nutritional value from plants.

Hamsters, guinea pigs, chinchillas, hedgehogs, and naked mole-rats eat their own droppings, which are thought to be a source of vitamins B and K, produced by gut bacteria. On rare occasions gorillas have been observed consuming their feces, possibly out of boredom, a desire for warm food, or to reingest seeds contained in the feces.

Coprophagia by plants

Some carnivorous plants, such as pitcher plants of the genus Nepenthes, obtain nourishment from the feces of commensal animals.

See also

• Fecal bacteriotherapy
• Fecal-oral route, a route of disease transmission
• Coprophilous fungi
• Scathophagidae
• Scatophagidae
• Pig toilet
• Kopi luwak

External links

• Why Does My Dog Eat Feces? - Theresa A. Fuess, Ph.D, College of Vet Medicine