Posterior Digest: January Edition

New year, same sh*t. Yes, 2021 is really giving us 2020 Part Deuce vibes. 

It’s not all bad. Vaccines are up, and Americans have set aside our differences as a nation to watch the Super Bowel. 

Now, TUSHY’s dropping our monthly load of the hottest news about butts. Yes, we’re re-crapping all of January’s best news scoops about poops.

New York Post: Comedian Wants To Drop A Permanent Poo on Wall Street

Just behind Wall Street’s iconic charging bull sculpture is… well, an idea. 

Obsessed with poops (as all comedians are), Ryan Dee wants a smiling pile of poo to be a regular fixture behind Arturo Di Modica’s “Charging Bull.” Dee has already beta tested the sculpture placement. So far, he has installed the cartoonish bronze poo behind the bull on multiple occasions to date. 

The comedian is planning to ask the New York City Parks Department for permission to officially display the sculpture for one day a year. The artist says it’s a whimsical take on Wall Street greed. Whether it’s that or just a poop joke, we don’t really care - we’re here for a poop sculpture.

Will the sculpture permit get pushed through or will it be blocked as so many real-life poos before it? Only time and New York’s Parks Department will tell. 

Smithsonian Magazine: How Poop Helped Ancient South American Civilizations Thrive

The Atacama Desert in Chile is so arid that scientists use the environment to simulate life on Mars. And yet a thousand years ago, agricultural communities thrived there. How? Ancient Chileans used irrigation systems to manage their precious water supply, and they had a secret weapon: seabird poop. A new study in Nature Plants suggests has the answer. In addition to maximizing every drop of available water, workers transported guano 50 miles from the coast to the desert. The dung was worth its weight in gold. In fact, it gained the nickname “white gold.” (We can’t recommend using this type of gold in jewelry!)

This new study builds on research released last year, which detailed how the Incas used guano in the 1400s to expand their empire. The Incas created some of the first human conservation laws to protect seabirds and their precious poops. The guano industry was highly regulated, with deadly consequences -- poop hoarders could face execution.

Bottom line, poop helped the Incas achieve a surplus of food and expand their empire, and it wouldn’t have been possible without white gold. We always knew there was something special about poo :)

Mercury News: Why Dogs Eat Poop

Since dogs were the real MVPs of 2020 quarantine, we’re gonna give them some real leeway on their weird butt stuff. From sniffing to licking, it’s only fair to let a lot of doggy poop fascination slide, no questions asked. But for animals that sleep in our beds and lick our face, we must draw a line somewhere. This month, dog owners from Maine to Texas ask what we’ve all been wondering: why do dogs eat poop? How normal is this? 

There are a few reasons dogs chow down on their sh*t. Say if Fido fears getting punished for pooping inside, he may try to eliminate the evidence by swallowing. But it could also tie to more ancient patterns. When dogs lived in the wild, dogs would eat poo to clean up their tracks and protect themselves from predators. 

Dogs also have a keen sense of smell, and they’re meat eaters. Cat poo, for example, often contains undigested food, which is kindof like catnip for dogs! Or your rescue dog may have been malnourished as a youngster, and forced to eat poo to survive. 

Whatever the reason, you can train your dog out of eating their dookies. Stay on top of cleaning up poop so there’s no available piles to chew from. Have treats nearby to entice your pet away from their nasty habit. This should stop your pup from having a shit-eating grin, and get back to the standard doggy smile you know and love.

The Guardian: Why Wombats Sh*t Bricks

First off, wombats are cute lil guys :)

And their poops are little cubes?! Very kawaii.

New research in scientific journal Soft Matter unpacks the mystery of wombat’s cube-shaped poo. Long a biological puzzle, this international study explains the unusual phenomenon. Apparently the cube shape is formed in the wombat intestines.

Before this study, scientists wondered whether wombats had cube-shaped anal sphincters. Were poos getting squeezed between the pelvic bones as they prepared for exit? There was another far-flung hypothesis that wombats manually patted the feces into the cube after the dropped their doos. 

The project originated about four years ago, when a researcher was dissecting a wombat and found cubes in the last meter of its intestines. From there, the question emerged: how do you produce cubes inside a soft tube. Nearly half a decade later, we know much more! For example, the wombat’s intestine has two stiff and two flexible regions. The rhythmic contractions in these areas help form the sharp corners of the cubes.

But… why? Well, scientists think wombats may communicate via feces, and that the cube shape helps scat stay put. Whatever the reason, this soft tube cube research may be applied to other fields, from manufacturing to digestive health. Thanks, wombats!

Wrapping Up

Ahhh we always feel better after dropping a fat load... of poop news! 

You’ve just enjoyed January’s sh*ttiest headlines. Tune in next month to stay current on the freshest scat stories as retold by TUSHY. And if you’re perusing this post on your throne, consider making yourself comfy with a TUSHY Ottoman.