9781422278666

CHAPTER 1 POO

How can you track down where different animals live? By looking out for their droppings! Scientists can learn a lot about an animal’s diet and behavior by studying its poo. Seeds, pieces of bone and undigested material can tell researchers what the animals have been eating. This also goes for the echidna, whose poo often glitters with shiny, undigested insect exoskeletons! An echidna doesn’t have teeth, so it has to grind its prey between its tongue and the bottom of its mouth. Its stomach lining grinds the contents further before they enter the small intestine. Eventually

marsupial mouse

bilby

quoll

echidna

it all comes out as a cylinder-shaped poo known as scat.

snake

8

stick insect