CHRISTINA WARINNER: Yes, and I think this is something that is really exciting. This is something my group is working on right now. Lactose intolerance is actually a really interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, all mammals produce lactase, which is the enzyme we use to break down the milk sugar lactose. And we produce this in our small intestine, and it helps us to digest milk when we’re young, when we’re infants. Horses– horse manure, roadapple (before motor vehicles became common, horse droppings were a big part of the rubbish communities needed to clean off roads)

This new step in excrement history was very important, not only because it led to the creation of sewage systems as we know them, but also because it began to alter the existing nutritional balance of land and water ecosystems, which left us grappling with many of the environmental problems we are experiencing today.Yokoyama, M. T.; Carlson, J. R. (1979). "Microbial metabolites of tryptophan in the intestinal tract with special reference to skatole". The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 32 (1): 173–178. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/32.1.173. PMID 367144. In India, cow dung and cow urine are major ingredients of the traditional Hindu drink Panchagavya. Politician Shankarbhai Vegad stated that they can cure cancer. [28]

Wang X, Zhou Y, Jiang N, Zhou Q, Ma WL. Persistence of intestinal SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with COVID-19 leads to re-admission after pneumonia resolved. Int J Infect Dis. 2020;95(1):433-435. doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2020.04.063 Whitehead, T. R.; Price, N. P.; Drake, H. L.; Cotta, M. A. (25 January 2008). "Catabolic pathway for the production of skatole and indoleacetic acid by the acetogen Clostridium drakei, Clostridium scatologenes, and swine manure". Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 74 (6): 1950–3. Bibcode: 2008ApEnM..74.1950W. doi: 10.1128/AEM.02458-07. PMC 2268313. PMID 18223109. CHRISTINA WARINNER: So the microbiome is this community of bacteria that lives in and on the human body. And they’re very important. For a long time, they were very difficult to study. And so we really underestimated their importance. But we now realize they’re a fundamental part of our biology. And we actually rely on many of their activities for basic biological functions. Everything ranging from digestion to even producing some of the vitamins that we require.

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But what we’re really after with this study is we’re trying to understand the evolution of the gut microbiome. We know that the communities of bacteria that live in our gut are highly responsive to the diets that we eat. And we know that industrialized diets have really changed the way that our microbial communities are structured. Cummings, Benjamin; Campbell, Neil A. (2008). Biology, 8th Edition, Campbell & Reece, 2008: Biology (8thed.). Pearson. p.890. The Origin of the Feces is the second studio album by the American gothic metal band Type O Negative, released in 1992. Kim BS, Li BT, Engel A, et al. Diagnosis of gastrointestinal bleeding: A practical guide for clinicians. World J Gastrointest Pathophysiol. 2014;5(4):467-78. doi:10.4291/wjgp.v5.i4.467 KATHLEEN DAVIS: So I would assume that to be fossilized these coprolites would have to be pretty old. I mean, how much detail is actually retained inside of them?

KATHLEEN DAVIS: And what was the age range of the coprolites that you were looking at in this study?CHRISTINA WARINNER: Well, although we tend to just flush it away without thinking about it, they’re actually incredibly rich sources of information about ourselves, about our lives, and about our activities. So for example, our feces contain our own DNA. So you can reconstruct a person’s genome from a fecal sample. And in those cases, they still retain the original bacteria the original human DNA and the original dietary DNA. Those are the ones we’re trying to focus on. These mutations are in Europe, parts of the near east, and parts of East Africa. And so these populations are called lactase persistent. And they’re milk tolerant. But what’s really interesting is that we see that while these societies in these areas have long practiced dairy production, we also see that other populations, for example, in Mongolia, also have very long histories of dairying. Slow, Deep and Hard • The Origin of the Feces • Bloody Kisses • October Rust • World Coming Down • Life Is Killing Me • Dead Again

Feces are discharged through the anus or cloaca during defecation. This process requires pressures that may reach 100 millimetres of mercury (3.9inHg) (13.3 kPa) in humans and 450 millimetres of mercury (18inHg) (60 kPa) in penguins. [6] [7] The forces required to expel the feces are generated through muscular contractions and a build-up of gases inside the gut, prompting the sphincter to relieve the pressure and release the feces. [7] Ecology urn:lcp:originoffeceswha0000walt:epub:6af0b5a7-d082-4a2e-a9c6-e18e696db781 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier originoffeceswha0000walt Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8ch1k418 Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781770411166 Lccn 2013414781 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9784 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA400579 Openlibrary_edition Definition of coprolite | Dictionary.com". dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020 . Retrieved 16 March 2021. IRA FLATOW: That was sci-fi producer Kathleen Davis speaking with Dr. Christina Warriner, assistant professor of anthropology at Harvard University. So we took it to a second level and we looked at the microbial communities as well. And the microbial communities within the human gut microbiome and the dog gut microbiome, although similar in many ways, are distinct. And so we were able to use these two different lines of evidence to distinguish them.And yet, they don’t have any of these mutations that are associated with producing lactase. So this has long been a puzzle that these mutations don’t actually explain all of the dairying behavior that we see in populations around the world. So we’ve been working really closely with herders in Mongolia trying to understand this. And we are starting to gather evidence that we think that the microbiome is really strongly involved in this process. Unlike the Minoans and the Harappans, the city of Rome had to clean up after about a million people, so small, wood-covered gutters wouldn’t do. With 10 times more inhabitants than Knossos had at its height, and thus producing 10 times more waste, totaling 500 tons a day, the Romans had to construct a truly colossal sewer system. They built the Greatest Sewer, or Cloaca Massima, named after the Roman goddess Cloacina—the Cleanser, from the Latin verb cluo, meaning “to clean.” The Cloaca Massima moved millions of gallons of water and flushed about a million pounds of crap a day. It was so immense that Greek geographer and historian Strabo wrote that Roman sewers were big enough “for wagons loaded with hay to pass” and for “veritable rivers” to flow through them. Despite many earthquakes, floods, collapsed buildings, and other cataclysms, the Roman sewers stood strong over centuries. Toilets in the ancient city of Ephesus, located near the Aegean Sea in modern day Turkey. Getty So part of this study was coming up with a systematic way of separating those so that we could focus on the human feces and understand this evolutionary process. But then, it also gave us a new window into dogs, which are some of our oldest friends. And how they have adapted and lived alongside us over the same period of time. Johnson, Steven (2006). The ghost map: the story of London's most terrifying epidemic--and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world. New York: Riverhead Books. ISBN 1-59448-925-4. OCLC 70483471. Archived from the original on 4 March 2022 . Retrieved 21 February 2021.