The 7 wonders of poop

Feces unites the entire animal kingdom. It is something we all have in common.

On average, we will do 1.2 poops every 24 hours. However, there is no such thing as "normal," and healthy people can poop much more or less frequently than the average.

Roughly speaking, we produce around 128 grams of poop each day.

Poop is ubiquitous on earth and forms an essential cog in the wheel of life, acting as a fertilizer for some organisms and food for others.

Human excrement has even followed us beyond the limits of the earth's atmosphere and into space: Neil Armstrong deposited four bags of poop on the moon's surface.

What is poop?

Before we get started, it's worth refreshing our understanding of precisely what poop is. Feces are the remains of food that bacteria have fermented in the gut and that the small intestine could not digest or absorb.

Poop is mostly water; and, as we all know from experience, the amount of water in each stool can vary, depending on several factors, including spicy food intake. Even so, on average, poop is around 75 percent water.

The second most significant ingredient after water is bacterial biomass — both alive and dead organisms; this makes up 25–54 percent of the dry weight of poop.

The rest is mostly undigested carbohydrate, fiber, protein, fat, and dead epithelial cells from the walls of the gastrointestinal tract.

Of course, if you accidentally swallow something indigestible, that will (hopefully) show up in your poop sooner or later, too.

Is there a better way to poop?

If you are reading this study in the Western world, you probably poop while sitting down. If you are reading this from somewhere in Africa or Asia, the chances are that you often poop while crouching.

This is, of course, a cultural thing; 

Fecal transplants

Over the years, interest in gut bacteria has rushed to the foreground. These microbes are vital for digestion, of course, but they also play roles in the immune system and much further afield in the human body.

Indeed, the microbiome is so important that some scientists now refer to it as a microbial human organ.