Pooseum

Let’s Talk About Poo

Poo, farts, toilets – what popular topics for jokes! But there is a serious scientific side too. Here at the Pooseum, we like to think of ourselves as poo-ologists – we get to the bottom of the matter, making a splash in the world of poo science.

Humans tend to view poo as taboo, discretely doing it behind closed doors and flushing it away as quickly as possible. But animals in the wild see poo as something valuable – it can be used, reused, recycled and even played with. Could our negative association with poo cause us humans to miss out on a valuable resource?

Step into the Pooseum and learn about the work of veterinarians, biologists and ecologists who draw vital conclusions from examining animal poo; paleo-scatologists who study fossilised poo to find clues about the diet of prehistoric animals; and other scientists who are working on ways to make use of the still largely untapped potential of animal poo in areas such as energy production and medicine.

What to Expect

Lots and lots of information on animal poo! For example, you will learn

• why not every poo smells nasty
• how dung from farms and zoos is used to produce electricity
• why a dog in Queensland tracks koala poo
• how Canadian owls use poo to catch their dinner
• why looking like bird poo is life-saving
• how bats avoid soiling themselves
• why you shouldn’t walk barefoot on a tropical beach
• how vanillin can be produced from cow dung
• why South Africans put antelope droppings in their mouth
• how some insect larvae kill termites with their farts
• why Amazon in India sells cowpats online
• how driverless cars can become disabled by bird poo
• why a table in an English museum is made from poo
• how long it takes an elephant to defecate
• why some beetle larvae have a telescopic anus
• and much, much more