Scats: More than meets the eye

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Scats: More than meets the eye

We speak it. Our politicians are full of it. We’re in it with our wives when we stay out too late with the guys…. And yet, when we see it in the bush and understand its sign and function, it makes for the most interesting subject.

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Scatology (the interest or study of faeces) allows one to understand a great deal of biological information about animals. And the inhabitants of the Kruger National Park offer no exception. Arguably the most common and easily identifiable dropping we see is that of the elephant. Rather than being uniform brown balls, on closer inspection you’ll be able to interpret that elephants have very poor digestive systems and only utilise approximately 40% of what they ingest. The rest simply passes through. This will explain why an adult elephant must eat up to 250kg of plant matter per day to sustain its energy requirements. Early summer may see a preponderance of guinea grass (Panicum maximum) seeds in their droppings. Later in the summer you’ll be sure to see whole marula fruits alongside the chewed marula nuts, some even germinating in situ! In the dry winter months there will be more bark strips in their dung as they struggle to find much else containing moisture. Very old elephants who are on their last set of molars can’t chew their food properly which shows as large un-masticated leaf material in their droppings. And an infant calf still on a diet of breast milk will have quite runny, mustard coloured dung.

The white rhino bull will demarcate his territory using his dung. He’ll habitually drop his dung at intervals along his territory boundary kicking and scraping backwards thus breaking up the balls. These areas, known as middens, become progressively deeper with prolonged use and can eventually become a couple of feet deep. The scent left on his feet will be laid on his trail as he departs leaving an olfactory (smell) signal to any other individuals that pass through. Interestingly, females and subordinate males will make use of these middens as latrines although they won’t break up their dung balls thereby creating a point for social information sharing.

The Spotted hyaena has jaws well-equipped to crunch on the bones of their prey. Coupled with a cast iron constitution, they ingest large quantities of bones causing their droppings to be extremely rich in calcium. On drying, these droppings turn a brilliant white and appear not unlike a ball of chalk. Remarkably, leopard tortoises and porcupines both eat hyaena scats as a calcium supplement, a behaviour known as coprophagia, to strengthen their shell and quills respectively.

Perhaps the largest ratio of scat size to body size must go to the African civet. Despite being the size of a medium-sized dog, their scats are by comparison much longer and considerably thicker. Civets drop their scats in large middens (up to a metre in diameter) made near the paths they use to forage and act as territorial markers. Civets have an extremely diverse diet and eat plants, fruit, small mammals, reptiles, insects and millipedes, being the one of the very few animals able to eat the latter. As a result, the middens, known as civetries, are littered with dried millipede rings, seeds, berry kernels, bones and grass.

I’ve only just exposed the tip of the ice berg on this topic and I could go on and on, but in closing a deeper knowledge of animal scats will reveal more of their lifestyles, habits and diet than one may appreciate. So the next time you’re in the Kruger Park be sure to look out for animal scats. Understanding them will open up a whole new world for you.


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