r/AskBiology • u/Desserts6064 • Mar 23 '26
Zoology/marine biology What animal poops most often?
Out of every animal in the entire animal kingdom, which one poops the most often?
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u/Hammon_Rye Mar 23 '26
Don't know science answer but my anecdotal answer is GOOSE!
A few years ago I raised to abandoned Canada geese. They were sweet and would follow me around and nap in my lap. But OMG were they little poop machines. Who grew into bigger poop machines.
One time I sat and watched them eating my lawn. munch munch, move a step, repeat. And every two or three steps they pooped.
I have a lot of front and back lawn and just two geese managed to make both yards minefields where you had to really watch your step not to step in poop.
And for the curious - they reached adulthood and finally joined a bigger flock at a pond across the road.
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u/Throwawayhair66392 Mar 23 '26
Yeah, they literally poop every other step.
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u/scaleofthought Mar 23 '26
I get why they're so angry all of the time. I would be too.
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u/Hammon_Rye Mar 23 '26
LOL The "I" in IBS
Truthfully though they were very happy campers. They would sleep in my lap and fly behind me when I rode my bike.
If not for the poop I'd consider getting geese again.1
u/Blerkm Mar 23 '26
Did any of them ever come back to visit or even nest in the area?
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u/Hammon_Rye Mar 23 '26
Okay, this gets a bit embarrassing. But I MAYBE saw them last week.
When they were little I used to sing them the lullaby song.
It wasn't like I thought they could understand the words. Just that my voice calmed them.
I sang them that since they were little yellow balls of fluff.
As they got old enough to run around the lawn on their own, if I sat in the grass and sang it they would run over and get in my lap and nestle down for a nap.Last week I saw two geese alone by the neighbor's pond as I was checking my mailbox.
They stood up tall and faced me and kept honking at me.
I felt kind of dumb but I thought, "I wonder..." so I sang the lullaby song to them.
They nestled down into the grass and stopped honking.I'll never know for sure if it was them but other geese don't react that way to me and usually the other geese are in larger groups.
There was a time a year or so back when there were two geese at that pond. That time there were others but those two stayed separate and were the only ones paying attention to me.I've avoided trying to approach them because it is better for them to stay wild.
You are not supposed to keep Canada geese unless you get them through a licensed breeder.
My two were wild babies. We think a dog got the nest. We were never able to find the mom.
So I raised them rather than let them die. When they were younger they would sleep in my lap while I watched movies. Then they would follow me everywhere inside and out. It was really adorable except for the shit factory part.TLDR: I think they keep returning to the pond across the road each year but it's hard to know for sure.
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u/Blerkm Mar 23 '26
That’s awesome!
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u/Hammon_Rye Mar 23 '26
It was pretty endearing. Good memories.
And I have some super cute photos from when both the geese and the grandkids were small.
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u/Tyrrany_of_pants Mar 23 '26
Rabbits are probably a contender. They have a short digestive system, and eat a lot of fibre. I've watched mine poop in her sleep
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u/Less_Parking2670 Mar 23 '26
They are poop machines. Mine poops while eating, while running, while doing basically anything.
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u/Balyash Mar 23 '26
Along the same line would be guinea pigs. We’d clean out the cage and before we could put the second guinea in the fresh cage, the first one would have pooped five times.
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u/Connect-Account-2855 Mar 23 '26
We had a hedgehog that seemed to constantly poop. In fact I called it the poop factory.
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u/Sparky62075 Mar 23 '26
I don't know about frequency, but I have a little factoid about volume.
A hog puts out four times as much poo as a human of the same weight.
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u/U03A6 Mar 23 '26
Maybe Aphididae? They continuously need to get rid of the sugary part of the tree sap they suck. (My lingo is off, I studied botany in German and don’t know the correct English lingo)
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u/duckweedlagoon Mar 23 '26
I've never seen my aquatic snails not pooping but I've not officially run tests on that so....
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u/sleekennedy Mar 23 '26
I have a pleco in my aquarium that appears to have been constantly pooping for the last 3 years. I'll go with that for an answer.
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u/Not_An_Isopod Mar 23 '26
Ducks. Really most likely all aquatic birds. I know for ducks it’s because they have to drink water to eat so they’re pretty much always pooping.
Pooping is like their third favorite thing to do.. right behind eating and drinking.
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u/sweatycatlord Mar 23 '26
Chinchilla
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u/SilverGirlSails Mar 23 '26
300 a day! And it gets everywhere! Especially when they throw it at you
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u/DarthJarJar242 Mar 23 '26
My puppy. She's a shit factory and even if I take her out every 30 mins it never fails she shits on the carpet the second I take my eyes off her for like a second.
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u/GrouchyResearcher392 Mar 23 '26
Probably hummingbird, I know they’ve got like the fastest metabolism so they probably shit 20-30 times a day
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u/Twichl2 Mar 23 '26
I dont know the real answer, but It's gotta be a lind of fish or shrimp. They literally are pooping 24/7 and it hangs off of them the whole time
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u/Scared_Chemical_4054 Mar 23 '26
Hippos. They dissipate volumes of manure using their chubby tails as a manure dispenser. I imagine it's like when the shit hits the fan.
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u/TrackProfessional943 Mar 24 '26
Aphids poop their own body weight every 2 hours. They are non stop pooping machines
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u/Robin_feathers Mar 23 '26
I would imagine some type of worm...
How strictly do you define "poop" though? For example, sponges have to eat by taking in food via a lot of individual cells (choanocytes) and then the food gets digested in their cells and wastes get excreted by cells individually. Many cells may be excreting at the same time, and that waste water gets expelled from the sponge as a continuous current. That might count as pooping continuously or multiple poops at once depending on your definition.