Every family has favorite pet stories. As Julie & I have not permitted pets beyond fish, our children love the stories of their parent’s childhood pets, particularly the stories of Ginger the dog. Here’s their favorite story: Ginger ate her own poop. That’s it. That’s the story. There are other stories, even other stories about Ginger. But that’s their favorite.
Why do I mention this story you ask? Well, I was working on a blog entry about my basement that had turned into a rant against personal odysseys, home-improvement and scrap books, when I remembered this story and decided to research why a dog would eat it’s own feces. (What can I say, I’m easily distracted.) Here are the important, earth-shattering discoveries I have made since googling “feces eating animals.”
It is not known why dogs engage in coprophagia or coprophagy (from the Greek, copro = feces and phagy = eat), but according to the well titled article, “Why Dogs Eat Poop” by Daniel Estep, Ph.D. and Suzanne Hetts, Ph.D. (www.AnimalBehaviorAssociates.com), “One theory is that it may be related to boredom or stress. Another is that it is related to digestive deficiencies. Neither theory has any support at the present time. No one really knows what causes it.” (So if your children ever tell you they are bored…) The article does provide comfort to some dog-owners whose pets suffer from coprophagia; rats, rabbits and horses also eat their own feces.
Another article on peteducation.com suggests that poop-eating habits can be curbed by making the poop “taste bad.” As a matter of fact, www.peteducation.com makes and sells a product to make poop taste bad. It advises against putting cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce on the feces, because, unfortunately many dogs “acquire a taste for Tabasco.” The site does suggest however, that dogs be leashed, “in case a luscious pile of feces is found along the way.” Mmm Mmm, feces with Tabasco sauce; luscious.
After all this research I have finally concluded that Ginger’s coprophagia was not caused by stress, anxiety, intestinal disorders, primal carnivorous urges, or the taste of the feces. She was just a really dumb dog.
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Yes Ginger was a dumb dog. However if someone is going around seasoning dog poop with Tabasco sauce or cayenne pepper it makes them much dumber than Ginger.
ReplyDeleteIn lieu of a comment, I will post a poem on the subject
ReplyDeleteEaten
If you eat carrion as do condors and vultures
You are necrophagus
What about dung beetles, nature’s own multures?
They are coprophagous
What brings together bird and bear?
These bee-eaters are apivorous
Herons, owls, and foxes share
A love of snakes: ophiophagus
Beavers and termites suggest that you try a tree
Wood-eaters are xyloghagus
People are creatures who like a variety
We are euryphagous
Everything living must eat to live
We all tend to munch on our own different fodder
Complex as green jelly bean ice cream
Or simple as sunlight and water
Dogs also like to eat their own vomit. Maybe you could do some research on that.
ReplyDeleteHere is my research on vomit-eating: there is no fancy Greek word for it. I did find this lovely fact though, "Most cases of stomach upset involve a dog who ate something that he shouldn’t have, be it an unfamiliar food or a non-food item." So if dogs vomit because they ate something they shouldn't have (like feces) and then eat their vomit, they are re-ingesting the same thing they weren't suppose to eat the first time. This leads me back to my original conclusion: dumb dog.
ReplyDelete