Poop Facts

Stools is a term applied to the discharges from the bowel. They are also referred to as "motions".

They vary with the nature of the diet - being dark in color with a meat diet and lighter with a milk diet. They are also affected by the state of a persons health.

Black stools may results result from the administration of iron, bismuth or manganese, and also from the presence of altered blood from some bleeding high up in the alimentary tract.

In young children suffering from diarrhea, the stools are green due to the bacterial decomposition.

In constipation the stools are drier and harder than the normal and often take the shape of round balls coated with mucus.

Intensity of the odor depends to a considerable extent upon the amount of meat eaten.

About 3/4 of your average turd is made of water. Of course, this value is highly variable - the water content of diarrhea is much higher, and the amount of water in poop that has been retained (voluntarily or otherwise) is lower. Water is absorbed out of fecal material as it passes through the intestine, so the longer a turd resides inside before emerging, the drier it will be.

Of the remaining portion of the turd, about 1/3 is composed of dead bacteria. These microcorpses come from the intestinal garden of microorganisms that assist us in the digestion of our food. Another 1/3 of the turd mass is made of stuff that we find indigestible, like cellulose, for instance. This indigestible material is called "fiber," and is useful in getting the turd to move along through the intestine, perhaps because it provides traction. The remaining portion of the turd is a mixture of fats such as cholesterol, inorganic salts like phosphates, live bacteria, dead cells and mucus from the lining of the intestine, and protein.

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The Bristol Stool Scale or Bristol Stool Chart is a medical aid designed to classify the form of human feces into seven groups. It was developed by Heaton and Lewis at the University of Bristol and was first published in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology in 1997 The form of the stool depends on the time it spends in the colon.

The seven types of stool are:

• Type 1: Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)


• Type 2: Sausage-shaped, but lumpy


• Type 3: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface


• Type 4: Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft


• Type 5: Soft blobs with clear cut edges (passed easily)


• Type 6: Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool


• Type 7: Watery, no solid pieces (entirely liquid)

Types 1 and 2 indicate constipation, with 3 and 4 being the "ideal stools" especially the latter, as they are the easiest to pass. 5-7 being further tending towards diarrhea.

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Poop stinks as a result of the products of bacterial action. Bacteria produce smelly, sulfur-rich organic compounds such as indole, skatole, and mercaptans, and the inorganic gas hydrogen sulfide. These are the same compounds that give farts their odor.

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The distinctive odor of feces is due to bacterial action. Gut flora produce compounds such as indole, skatole, and thiols (sulfur containing compounds), as well as the inorganic gas hydrogen sulfide. These are the same compounds that are responsible for the odor of flatulence. Consumption of foods with spices may result in the spices being undigested and adding to the odor of feces. Certain commercial products exist that claim to reduce the odor of feces. The perceived bad odor of feces has been hypothesized to be a deterrent for humans, as consumption or touching it may result in sickness or infection. Of course, human perception of the odor is a subjective matter; an animal that eats feces may be attracted to its odor.

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In humans, defecation may occur (depending on the individual and the circumstances) from once every two or three days to several times a day. Hardening of the feces may cause prolonged interruption in the routine and is called constipation.

Human fecal matter varies significantly in appearance, depending on diet and health. Normally it is semisolid, with a mucus coating. Its brown coloration comes from a combination of bile and bilirubin, which comes from dead red blood cells.

In newborn babies, fecal matter is initially yellow/green after the meconium. This coloration comes from the presence of bile alone. In time, as the body starts expelling bilirubin from dead red blood cells, it acquires its familiar brown appearance, unless the baby is breast feeding, in which case it remains soft, pale yellowish, and not-unpleasantly scented until the baby begins to eat significant amounts of other food.

Throughout the life of an ordinary human, one may experience many types of feces. A "green" stool is from rapid transit of feces through the intestines (or the consumption of certain blue or green food dyes in quantity), and "clay-like" appearance to the feces is the result of a lack of bilirubin.

Bile overload is very rare, and not a health threat. Problems as simple as serious diarrhea can cause blood in one's stool. Black stools caused by blood usually indicate a problem in the intestines (the black is digested blood), whereas red streaks of blood in stool are usually caused by bleeding in the rectum or anus.

Food may sometimes make an appearance in the feces. Common undigested foods found in human feces are seeds, nuts, corn and beans, mainly because of their high dietary fiber content. Artificial food coloring in some processed foods such as highly colorful packaged breakfast cereals can also cause unusual feces coloring if eaten in sufficient quantities.

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The color comes mainly from bilirubin, a pigment that arises from the breakdown of red blood cells in the liver and bone marrow. The actual metabolic pathway of bilirubin and its byproducts in the body is very complicated, so we will simply say that a lot of it ends up in the intestine, where it is further modified by bacterial action. But the color itself comes from iron. Iron in hemoglobin in red blood cells gives blood its red color, and iron in the waste product bilirubin gives rise to its brown color.

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Poop is mostly shades of brown or yellow, but other colors can arise under certain circumstances. For example, someone with a bleeding ulcer might have tarry black poop from the presence of partially digested blood. Bleeding in the intestine, from an anal fissure or split, for example, can stain the poop red. Some illnesses in babies gives them green or even blue-green poop. But another source of blue poop in children is more innocent: it can come from eating a concentrated source of blue food coloring such as ice cream. Intense red food coloring can produce bright red poop. Sometimes brightly colored foods pass through the gut almost unchanged, and the turd may be speckled with bright red fragments such as pimentos, or bright yellow kernels of corn.

One can experience white poop after consuming a barium milkshake for the purposes of getting an x-ray of the upper gastrointestinal tract.

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Yes, meat protein is rich in sulfides, resulting in smellier farts and poop. This is the reason that the poop of carnivores such as dogs, cats and snakes smells worse than the poop of herbivores such as cows and horses.

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Feces will sometimes be required for microbiological testing, looking for an intestinal pathogen or other parasite or disease.

Biochemical tests done on feces include faecal elastase and faecal fat measurements, as well as tests for faecal occult blood.

It is recommended that the clinician correlate the symptoms and submit specimens according to laboratory guidelines to obtain results that are clinically significant. Formed stools often do not give satisfactory results and suggest little of actual pathologic conditions.

Three main types of microbiological tests are commonly done on feces:

• Antibody-antigen type tests, that look for a specific virus (e.g. rotavirus).


• Microscopic examination for intestinal parasites and their ova (eggs).


• Routine culture.

Routine culture involves streaking the sample onto agar plates containing special additives, such as MacConkey agar, that will inhibit the growth of Gram-positive, thick membranes organisms and will selectively allow enteric pathogens to grow, and incubating them for a period, and observing the bacterial colonies that have grown.

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This is generally caused by a recent meal of hot peppers or related spices. The oils associated with these foods remain intact and active all the way through one's gastrointestinal system. These oils can also generate hot farts.

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