• Hegar
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    414 months ago

    It’s probably a gut microbe thing that aids in processing food more efficiently, right? Koalas eat their own shit as well - I think their mothers even feed them shit, iirc. I think it’s not uncommon among herbivores.

    • @agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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      324 months ago

      They have two kinds of poop: the little cocoa pebble ones, and soft wet ones that look like grape clusters, called cecotropes. The cecotropes are partly digested, and they eat them to extract more nutrients the second go round.

      • Hegar
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        104 months ago

        Ah, fascinating! We had a bunny growing up and I always remember her eating the little pebbly poop, but I’m probably just remembering wrong.

      • Tlaloc_Temporal
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        74 months ago

        So it’s like chewing cud, except it’s multiple passes of the same stomach instead of different stomachs.

      • TWeaK
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        144 months ago

        The koala thing is slightly different, at birth they can’t digest eucalyptus leaves. The necessary gut bacteria is passed down from mother to child through coprophagy.

        Bunnies and guinea pigs just eat their poop to ensure complete digestion.

  • Wugmeister
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    314 months ago

    No shit, they eat grass and only have one stomach. They have to eat their cecotropes to actually digest the grass

    • @dalekcaan@lemm.ee
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      194 months ago

      You may not like the format, that’s fine, but I would like to point out it was used correctly in this meme.

  • LEM 1689
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    194 months ago

    In case anyone else was wondering too.

    Even though it’s a fact that rabbits can eat their own poop, that really shouldn’t be a sign that you should follow suit (even if it was for your survival). Eating rabbit droppings has no nutritional value for humans.

    https://rabbitinsider.com/can-you-eat-rabbit-poop/

  • Avicenna
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    84 months ago

    Umm, what if we were to hypothetically convince the manosphere that this is the most manly thing that can be possibly achieved

  • TWeaK
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    64 months ago

    Fun fact: at birth koalas can’t actually digest eucalyptus leaves on their own. They eat their mum’s faeces to gain the necessary gut bacteria.

  • @prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 months ago

    I look forward to never having to read about these kinds of studies again once all of the funding disappears.

    I hope I don’t need the /s