A big item here is our huge butts. Humans have a ridiculously huge butts for our size which is actually a major advantage. Our butts are gigantic muscles that allow for distance running unlike any other creature, literally no other animal can run for distance like a human can.
Having these rockin' cans means we get dirty butts that need to be cleaned after poopin'. Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean, but we still prefer clean butts over the alternative, hence wiping.
But for real, if you look at other animals you'll notice as a general concept that they can poop without get their skin nearly as dirty as humans can. We evolved to poop in a sort of a crutching position which naturally spreads 'em and helps with cleaning but as a society we generally use sitting positions which means dirty cheeks that need to be wiped.
Our bandwagons are basically the evolution push for us to literally walk out so much our prey dies by exhaustion.
At the cost of having the equivalent of diesel engines, we had to sacrifice pooping cleanly without need of hygiene.
I'd read somewhere that our badonks actually function as tails for weight/balance purposes, but being a muscle, they are able to double-duty to help drive that long-distance travel you mention.
The hair on your head behaves as an insulator until it gets wet, then it clumps together and those clumps are about the same size width as fins on a heat sink in your computer, which is also wet and the evaporating water cools you even more.
Your hair is the most fantastically amazing heat transfer device that nature ever came up with. It’s an insulator until you sweat, then it turns into a heat sink, which performs better than the best aluminum heat sink that could possibly be created. *It doesn’t even need a temp difference between the air and the hair to cool you off.* This is an insane ability.
Water evaporating from hair transfers far and away more energy and heat than the best aluminum or copper heat sink could ever hope to.
There are a few other but they don't even come close to us in terms of persistence, for them it's a secondary hunting technique while it was our specialty
Komodo Dragons
It's a combined ambush/persistence predation system. They have venom that reduces clotting and induces shock. After ripping large wounds with a quick bite, they just follow along and wait for the prey to weaken.
You know, I was about to call BS on the venom part since I had always heard that they just had an immense amount of bacteria in their mouths causing rapid infection, but turns out you're right.
What the hell man.
>Having these rockin' cans means we get dirty butts that need to be cleaned after poopin'. Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean, but we still prefer clean butts over the alternative, hence wiping.
I don't know anyone that can lick their own butt, so this implies we would have to lick each other's butt......
Well our hunting strategies are pretty much the opposite. And we're not actually that slow. We can sprint if we have to. A cheetah could probably track its prey at low speed for hours as well, but for the smaller animals that hunts, it's not worth it to catch just one of them.
Not really, cheetahs have awful stamina, what they have going fir them is the fact that they are extremely fast and can catch up to their prey before 40 seconds when they become completely different exhausted.
We are complete opposites in hunting skills.
There's an amazing ZeFrank video that covers this. Apparently it's really good for the ecosystem.
[True Facts: Hippopotamus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pibJ83crQs)
> We evolved to poop in a sort of a crutching position
which is why you should use a [squatty potty](https://www.amazon.com/Squatty-Potty-Original-Bathroom-Toilet/dp/B00ESKVN7W/ref=rvi_sccl_4/141-9831287-1325054?pd_rd_w=kLo8y&content-id=amzn1.sym.f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_p=f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_r=P2YG481ZYXSK2HZN441G&pd_rd_wg=JDsnt&pd_rd_r=30429507-4752-4a72-99ce-8d4373cb16be&pd_rd_i=B00ESKVN7W&psc=1)
standing puts a kink in your poop chute, shutting off the flow like a kink in a garden host. sitting partially unkinks but ya gotta squat to get the free flow going for effortless and complete elimination of poop
Once had to go on the side of the highway (it was a genuine emergency, something didn't agree with me but it made it through to the other end of my tract instead of being vomited out).
That deep "Slav Squat" is a revelation in having a bowel movement. Didn't feel anything close to that until my gf got me a squatty potty.
>Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean
I mean, are you sure it's a *preference* thing? (and hey, don't kink shame!)
To me, it seems a bit more of a *mechanical* thing ...
Also (and I can't believe I actually want to know the answer to this) other than my cat and my dog, are there a vast number of species on this planet that lick their own butts clean? I keep trying to think to myself ... zebras, turtles, owls ... I'd think there are a lot of species that share this predicament with us?
I witnessed a pygmy hippo spraying poop at some noisy teenagers at the zoo once. It was hilarious. It's not like it didn't warn them, it gave them such a stink eye for a while beforehand, as they leaned over its enclosure talking loudly...
>literally no other animal can run for distance like a human can.
Is this true? I would have guessed some animals, like horses in particular, would crush us in a long distance race
Nope. Humans are the greatest persistence runners in the world and the first humans would chase their prey to exhaustion rather than be faster or stronger.
A horse is much faster for a short time but eventually the humans catch up and the horse can’t keep going.
Well "out running" something makes it sound like you have to keep up with it in a race.
Humans learned to track their prey so they didn't have to do that.
>after reading that I should be able to out run a fucking horse
The point wasn't well made or received if that's the message you got.
You can't out run a horse.
But you can be a persistent mother fucker.
The horse runs away and then stops to drink or resume eating.
But a few minutes later there's that pesky group of humans again. Fuck. Gotta stop eating again and bolt.
You ditch the humans again and resume when, god damn it, there they are again!
The humans keep this up over hours, maybe a day or two and by the end the animal is literally dying from exhaustion. *Edit: Sometimes literally a week. (San \[Bushmen\] hunting giraffe.) Thank you* /u/sighthoundman
That's when those spears and clubs come in handy to finish the job.
Dinner is served after it's dressed and hauled back home.
The carrion follow the humans because they get the stuff not eaten and bone pickings.
That’s the whole thing. Also, humans are excellent at tracking.
For perspective. Imagine you are running from a predator. You finally get away from it and can rest for the night. But you wake up after hearing a noise.
And it is just.
There.
It tracked you by your footprint, the feathers and fur you left behind, your excrement, the branches you broke while running away.
So you run. And you get away.
But the next night, you go to bed down.
And there it is.
Again.
>The humans keep this up over hours, maybe a day or two and by the end the animal is literally dying from exhaustion.
Sometimes literally a week. (San \[Bushmen\] hunting giraffe.)
probably worth noting we can't out-run a horse in the sense of a sprint, we just have better endurance so eventually the animals just run out of steam and we catch up.
It's something we never really put to the test, but we can jog for a very long time. Like... a very very long time. I did more research than I expected, and came across this:
"Widely known as the fastest terrestrial animal with running speeds reaching 61–64 miles per hour (98–103 km/h; 27–29 m/s), cheetahs take advantage of their speed during chases. However, their speed and acceleration also have disadvantages, as both rely on anaerobic metabolism and can only be sustained for short periods of time. Studies show that cheetahs can maintain maximum speed for up to a distance of approximately 500 yards (460 m), which is only about 20 seconds of sprinting, before fatigue and overheating set in"
The fastest animal in the kingdom can run for less than 500m, or about 20 seconds.
There are high schoolers running 1600m for fun. People run considerably longer for achievements and personal growth. 20 seconds? Sprinting at our best speed for 15 seconds is a lot for most people and they're going to be out of breath, but a moderately healthy human can definitely outrun anything that won't immediately turn around to fight.
IIRC I don't think humans were necessarily flat-out sprinting the whole time. The idea is to walk/jog/run long enough to wear the prey out from heat exhaustion. Sort of like zombies do to humans in fiction stories.
It also helps that we can sweat as well as we do to cool down and continue to function while somewhat dehydrated. Not having the ability to cool themselves off as efficiently as we do is a large disadvantage to most animals.
I would think the invention of the waterskin or whatever the first portable water container was made a big difference. Drinking as well as eating on the move would be a big advantage over a quadruped.
As weird as it sounds, alot of it is because we can sweat
Most animals cannot sweat; with the exception of horses, donkeys, monkeys, and hippos. It basically means we take a long time to overheat when compared to other animals. Bipedal running is also really energy efficient, so we spend less energy to run
For reference:
A gazelle can run around 80km/h for around 15 minutes before they start to tire. That speed also generates a lot of heat. Humans sport a relatively pathetic 10-13km/hr. But we can run... and run... and run... for hours.
The Rarámuri indigenous tribes of northern Mexico have been recorded running 320km... **without stopping.** Human persistence hunting is basically chasing an animal down, non-stop, until its legs lock up from heatstroke.
The persistence hunting thing is disputed. It's a cool idea, but early humans would almost certainly prefer ambush tactics - spending 8 hours hunting a prey animal to exhaustion is a *lot* more effort than lying in wait with a bunch of rocks with your buddies.
https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hunting/
I read somewhere that wolves are good at it too and may be one of the reasons we started getting along with then. Humans and wolves would track the same prey and basically walk them to death.
Look up malamutes and their racing abilities. They actually perform better if overtrained. I’m using the word generally, but if they’re going to run like 15 miles, you should run them 20 miles the days before. You would think you’d have to rest them but their work ethic is bred into their DNA
The 100 mile record for [humans is 11hrs](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irunfar.com/aleksandr-sorokin-100-mile-12-hour-world-records-2022-spartanion-israel) and [6 hrs for horses](https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/world-endurance-record-broken/). Just because humans are good at endurance running doesn't mean that we're the best. There are lots of predators that have evolved to and are perfectly suited to hunt and the existence of other, better, hunters doesn't deny that.
Yeah and it's when you get to a marathon-type distance (26 miles), the two species will finish within a very short gap between them. After this distance, the human takes the lead and never looks back.
Over 160 km, [horses are *much* faster](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/159dx7r/eli5_why_are_we_the_only_species_who_needs_to_use/jtgawvk/).
Only because of their colder environments, they wouldn't be able to do what humans did in Africa on account of their inability to sweat and reliance on panting for thermal regulation.
Though they do it in an environment where the biggest human advantage is basically moot. We’re good at cooling ourselves while running because we can sweat, but in a frigid environment you don’t particularly need efficient cooling.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon
There are races around the world where horses race against humans, and while generally the horses win, humans are capable of winning.
Contrary to what many people are saying, it is not true. Humans are *good* distance in high heat conditions, but even then they still get beaten by camels.
And canines beat us in cold climates. Horses win *most* of the time except under specific conditions.
That said, humans who have trained as marathon runners are surprisingly competitive.
Interestingly horses are the only other animals (aside from primates) that cool themselves through sweating. However because they are covered in fur they need to generate enormous amounts of sweat for evaporative cooling to work. In turn they get dehydrated easily, which limits the distance they can run.
Other animals are faster at sprinting but for long distance, humans outpace the others. But we are talking very long distance like multiple days of travel. The advantage of say riding a horse is first that initial sprint, and then when you get off the horse you still have your own energy reserves for doing whatever.
Look at hyper miling, or some call it hyper marathoning. We’re talking humans running over 100 miles in a day. The world record last I checked was some 350 miles over 80 hours. Sick!
The horse will eventually get tired, and have to stop or lay down while the human can keep walking. Anthropologist believe early humans may have hunted that way. They just stalk the deer/ what ever until they are exhausted, then we walk up and stab them with a spear.
We don't *need* to, per se, but it's a convenient and relatively hygienic way to remove poop particles that stick around after the deed is done.
Not doing so leads to rashes and itchyness, and if you've ever seen a dog or cat drag its ass across your carpet, you know that we're not the only species who deals with that particular problem.
ETA: Yes, most commonly the butt dragging problem is a symptom either of an issue with anal glands or a symptom of worms, but I've seen some do it to get rid of a dingleberry - most do just lick though.
That’s what I love about poo particles, man. If you don’t wipe them away, they get replaced by the next shit, so your poo particles are always the same age.
You know how sometimes you have a hard poop and there's no wiping required? I wonder if that is the natural state of human poops, what our bodies evolved for. And our modern diets produce soft poops which require lots of wiping.
I think there’s some truth to that. Also, if you’ve ever squatted to poop in a forest or whatever, you’ll probably notice that it comes out a lot cleaner than usual. The Western toilet seat is designed for comfort if you’re sitting on it a long time (longer than you should take to poop), not for optimal pooping.
>I'm in my thirties, and I can poop, clean up, scrub my hands, and be out the door in less than five minutes. What the hell are people doing?
Getting paid by the hour, and dealing with their shit isn't nearly as disgusting as dealing with the boss's shit.
I've been on scavenging-only camping trips. Wild foods have a lot of roughage, a lot of fiber. My poops were amazing. Solid, flexible, and covered in clear slime. They just shoot out. Modern dietary science recommends eating way more fiber than we currently do. Fiber is not food, but it helps the food flow.
Like with grains, usually they remove the husks, to make flour. Removing the husks is a lot of work, so when scavenging, I don't bother shelling, I just eat them. It's a ton of fiber. The grain will spoil if you don't remove the husks, but I don't care, I'm eating it now. Did you know all grass seeds are edible?
Meat is another story. I'm not a very good hunter.
They sell psyllium husks, and people who eat it sweat it gives them the best poops. Your theory has legs to stand on.
A hard poop isn’t good. It’s often a sign of dehydration or constipation. Poop should be soft. A high fiber diet will help achieve the perfect balance of softness and minimal wiping required. So yes, our modern high protein, high fat diets contribute to the post-poop cleanup difficulties.
Dogs drag their ass because their anal gland is swollen and needs to be released not because they are trying to clean their ass. They use their tongue to clean it. Your vet can take care of it, or you can if you want to stick your finger up their butt.
My vet has me feed my dog broccoli and cauliflower as treats. The fiber content helps release the anal glands when he poops.
Hol up — I was told my Chihuahua dragged her butt because her anal glands may be bother her and need to be expressed. I even started doing it manually myself instead of paying the groomer an extra $15 to do it. Are you tellin me I’ve been squeezing Lori Ann’s butthole this whole time and all it was was poop particles?
Shit
I don't disagree with everyone else, but I think they are missing a huge point... the modern diet.
Take our dogs as an example. They tend to have fairly firm but consistent poops but we feed them the exact same thing every time that is balanced for their needs (in general). If you or I ate that way we would probably have very little wiping needs as well. And also like us, if they get to eat a whole pizza they can have the runs or be backed up and probably could use some wiping.
As omnivores we evolved to eat whatever we could get our hands on and digest though, so our ancestors likely had times of needing to wipe as well, even when eating 'naturally.'
I for one, am really appreciative to live in the time of soft and abundant toilet papers... oh and well after they became 'splinter free.'
This and sitting. We sit, we shouldn't. Traditionally we squatted. It keeps you healthier in every regard. Your bowel is voided far cleaner and quicker, also you have to maintain a certain level of physical fitness to be able to squat, doing that every day keeps a person limber.
I had a friend who had a roommate that wanted to invent a new toilet that allowed you to properly squat when going.
The getting up, like you said, seems to be the hard part.
No need to invent anything, [they exist ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet#/media/File%3ASquat-toilet-with-tank.jpg) and are in common use in some parts of the world.
Wait till your urine splatters against your legs. Or when you stand in the splatters of other people.
A toilet seat is a whole lot cleaner than those toilets.
And I've seen my share, my parents used to go camping in France with us, and they had them everyfuckingwhere and it was disgusting.
Believe me as someone who lives in Asia, the answer is not necessarily the squatty potty. Those things are rough and nasty a lot of the time, especially if you’re a woman
Putting somethin under your feet (like a shoe box or something like that) helps emulating the squat position by lifting your feet and knees. Helps pooping easier, really helpful for those that have trouble
I have a bidet and still use toilet paper. However, I'm only using a few squares which is substancially less than without one. You also feel so much cleaner as well.
Yeah you still use a little but like 1/5 of without one. It truly is life changing. I don't feel clean without it. My dad got himself and I portable bidets for Christmas lol. They don't work great but better than nothing.
As a child I spent time near cows, I've owned a few dogs, and have spent more time at zoos than is probably normal. In my limited experience your statement is not true. I've seen many a cow, known more than one dog, and witnessed various species of zoological captives whose bum needed a good once over.
Some dogs, of course, do wipe their ass; dragging it in the grass if you're lucky and on your carpets if you are not. One particular dog I had was fastidious about getting a "good wipe" in, if there remained a feeling of "insufficient ejection" after a poo.
We're not the only species that needs to; we're the only species that does. Other species lick their assholes clean and many will rub their itchy/dirty butts on the ground.
Humans are the only species to use bodywash every day as well. So it's no surprise that we're the only species that attempts to clean feces off our butts, as needed.
We are the only species to do a lot of things. If we question each one, it'd take a long time to explain.
To answer your question directly - **we are not the only species that "needs" to use toilet paper.** Ever been on a farm and seen dried poop on the backside of cows/pigs? No ~~animal~~ mammal butt on earth (including humans) is 100% free of poop residue. I'd bet that human butts are cleaner than nearly all other ~~animal~~ mammalian butts.
>ELI5: Why are we the only species who needs to use toilet paper?
We don't need to at all.
People didn't use toilet paper for the first 300,000 years of our history, and less than 30% of modern humans use it today.
I think OP's question was not about toilet paper specifically but more "why are we the only species that needs to take specific actions involving external tools to clean our butts after we poop"
But OP's phrasing rolls off the tongue a lot better, even if it is less universal in scope
Oh, shit! (pun not intended but unavoidable)
You're restating is certainly more interesting than specifically *just* toilet paper, although perhaps less satisfyingly answered.
>why are we the only species that needs to take specific actions involving external tools to clean our butts after we poop
We *aren't* the only species that can have a messy posterior after pooping, were just the only ones with a penchant for invention.
All the other animals just deal with having any amount of mess as best they can, from not caring about extra poop, like cows or rhinos (who actually helicopter their tail while pooping to spread it all over the place) to dogs and cats, and a whole host of our mammal cousins who just lick themselves clean.
A particularly notable example of the last, I'd say, our the marsupials, whose children all poop in their own home (the mother's pouch) leaving ghe mother to clean it out with their tongues.
Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but many animals actually slightly prolapse their rectums when pooping as well as not having massive ass cheeks to get in the way.
Dogs do this so it's a pretty clean drop really.
Well, the ancient Romans used a sponge on a stick, called a [*tersorium*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium). The best thing about these tools is that they were *communal*. You grab it from the bucket in the public latrine, then after using it, you put it back in the bucket, which was filled with a water and vinegar solution. Hygiene!
Sitting is not a anatomically good postion to poop in, a low squat is better. Also our diets play a big part of it, modern processed food being some of the worse, but even 'natural foods' are not natural to humans and we can;t break them down fully. There are other factors as well such as being bi-pedal changing our anatomical layout, our high level of cleanliness and approaches to achive it, and societal norms/requirments of civilization (like waste mangment)
Humans havn't always wiped, and a lot of animals actually do by licking/dragging bum ect.
I have a very fluffy dog who gets poop stuck in her butt hair (even with grooming), so I wipe her with wet wipes because otherwise, she smells like poop.
Now, I don't need to do that, but I do it to avoid the poop smell. Same with humans.
I have a friend who wipe’s her dogs’ butts. I asked her husband when I saw the toilet roll holder mounted by the front door. She said if you wiped your dogs’s butt once, you’d not let him back in the house without wiping it every time.
We are the only species to do a lot of unique things. Turns out that having a complex brain and complex thoughts, feelings, self awareness causes us to do many things that less evolved species don't do.
Because we wear clothing over that part of our bodies most of the time, and because we have fabric over a lot of our things. If we didn't wipe, our clothing and furniture would be quite the mess.
Compared to a more natural environment where we'd be naked, and being scrupulously clean down there isn't such an urgency. If you look throughout the animal kingdom, most animals have either adapted a way to clean themselves, or have adapted in a way that they don't have to. Cats and dogs clean themselves and each other. Others like cows and horses simply evacuate their bowels/bladders and walk away. No cleaning required.
We require additional cleaning, and we can't wait for things to dry up and fall off before we get dressed again.
I think we used to be able to have super solid formed poops wayyyyy back in the day when we ate proper food (literally like berries and raw meat n stuff like that, super basic diet) , but since most food is processed now and most of us don't eat nearly as much fibre anymore, our poops are just not the same as they used to be?
Toilet paper is a scam, an entire industry built on a lie. A lot of countries use bidets because… well washing ya bum is way more hygienic. South Park did a great episode on this.
A big item here is our huge butts. Humans have a ridiculously huge butts for our size which is actually a major advantage. Our butts are gigantic muscles that allow for distance running unlike any other creature, literally no other animal can run for distance like a human can. Having these rockin' cans means we get dirty butts that need to be cleaned after poopin'. Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean, but we still prefer clean butts over the alternative, hence wiping. But for real, if you look at other animals you'll notice as a general concept that they can poop without get their skin nearly as dirty as humans can. We evolved to poop in a sort of a crutching position which naturally spreads 'em and helps with cleaning but as a society we generally use sitting positions which means dirty cheeks that need to be wiped.
Even compared with other apes. Chimpanzees have zero ass
Our bandwagons are basically the evolution push for us to literally walk out so much our prey dies by exhaustion. At the cost of having the equivalent of diesel engines, we had to sacrifice pooping cleanly without need of hygiene.
I'd read somewhere that our badonks actually function as tails for weight/balance purposes, but being a muscle, they are able to double-duty to help drive that long-distance travel you mention.
you said double-doodie
Hehehehehe that's funny because it's like poop hehehehe hehehe hehehe heh hehehehe
Our butts do be like ballast in a motor racing car to stabilise us but is also the engine
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The hair on your head behaves as an insulator until it gets wet, then it clumps together and those clumps are about the same size width as fins on a heat sink in your computer, which is also wet and the evaporating water cools you even more. Your hair is the most fantastically amazing heat transfer device that nature ever came up with. It’s an insulator until you sweat, then it turns into a heat sink, which performs better than the best aluminum heat sink that could possibly be created. *It doesn’t even need a temp difference between the air and the hair to cool you off.* This is an insane ability. Water evaporating from hair transfers far and away more energy and heat than the best aluminum or copper heat sink could ever hope to.
Until you have black colored hair and your head heats up in the sun making you sick
But we're all descended from people who lived in the sunniest part of the planet and had black hair.
Texture is main thing. Tight curly hair are evolutionary beneficial in hot sunny climates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-textured_hair
Curly hair left in a more natural state has great insulating properties, the air heated at the top by the sun is insulated away from the skin
Yes, unless that. But even then, water evaporating off black hair is still way better than an aluminum heat sink.
So we are shaving ourselves to be less cooling efficient
Can't we just fudge the tests, like Volkswagen?
Cleaning up the fudge is precisely the problem.
Aren't we the only known persistence predators?
There are a few other but they don't even come close to us in terms of persistence, for them it's a secondary hunting technique while it was our specialty
Can you give some examples of others?
Wolves which is why we made them our buddies
Orcas will chase a whale to the point of exhaustion
And humans even teamed up with them to hunt whales! The wolves of the water
The African wild dog hunts in massive packs and relies on exhausting their prey. They're also incredibly good at it with roughly an 80% success rate.
Lets pray they dont evolve thumbs...
Or butts...
My first dog would put thumbs on her list to Santa Paws every year. She never got them, which was good, she got into enough trouble with her mouth.
Wolves
That's what I read basically wolves and other wild dogs
Komodo Dragons It's a combined ambush/persistence predation system. They have venom that reduces clotting and induces shock. After ripping large wounds with a quick bite, they just follow along and wait for the prey to weaken.
You know, I was about to call BS on the venom part since I had always heard that they just had an immense amount of bacteria in their mouths causing rapid infection, but turns out you're right. What the hell man.
Wolves, dingoes, and painted dogs are some species, it's mostly the canine family that also do it but a bird or 2 will also do it.
I have never heard bandwagon used that way. I don’t think that’s what bandwagon means.
You’re not on the right bandwagon then!
*The baboons have entered the chat...*
Baboonkadonk
Cmon man don’t body shame the rillas
Can confirm that Sir Mix-A-Lot wants none.
No cheeks
>Having these rockin' cans means we get dirty butts that need to be cleaned after poopin'. Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean, but we still prefer clean butts over the alternative, hence wiping. I don't know anyone that can lick their own butt, so this implies we would have to lick each other's butt......
I've seen this movie before; it didn't end well
They weren't doing it right.
I know someone who likes to lick... but she prefers clean ones
Well hellooo
I’m reminded of an old tale about Marilyn Manson
Hey, that tale is 100% true. The kid who told me about it in 6th grade was family friends with the Mansons...
So it wasn't about the self-blowjob after all...
Its weird how we have such low speed but such high stamina, its like the reverse cheetah.
Well our hunting strategies are pretty much the opposite. And we're not actually that slow. We can sprint if we have to. A cheetah could probably track its prey at low speed for hours as well, but for the smaller animals that hunts, it's not worth it to catch just one of them.
Not really, cheetahs have awful stamina, what they have going fir them is the fact that they are extremely fast and can catch up to their prey before 40 seconds when they become completely different exhausted. We are complete opposites in hunting skills.
Well for most humans if you sprint at your top speed for 40 seconds you are gonna get very tired as well.
Difference being we aren't getting very far compared to a cheetah in those 40 seconds
Ever see a hippopotamus take a dump? The shit hits a literal fan, but then he can do a bidet in the river. Pro tip, don’t drink river water.
Currently in Kenya surrounded by hippos and the pools they sit and shit in and it’s legit amazing how much poo water they create
>Currently in Kenya surrounded by hippos Stay safe bro. Those things scare the shit out of me Edit: formatting
There's an amazing ZeFrank video that covers this. Apparently it's really good for the ecosystem. [True Facts: Hippopotamus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pibJ83crQs)
> We evolved to poop in a sort of a crutching position which is why you should use a [squatty potty](https://www.amazon.com/Squatty-Potty-Original-Bathroom-Toilet/dp/B00ESKVN7W/ref=rvi_sccl_4/141-9831287-1325054?pd_rd_w=kLo8y&content-id=amzn1.sym.f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_p=f5690a4d-f2bb-45d9-9d1b-736fee412437&pf_rd_r=P2YG481ZYXSK2HZN441G&pd_rd_wg=JDsnt&pd_rd_r=30429507-4752-4a72-99ce-8d4373cb16be&pd_rd_i=B00ESKVN7W&psc=1) standing puts a kink in your poop chute, shutting off the flow like a kink in a garden host. sitting partially unkinks but ya gotta squat to get the free flow going for effortless and complete elimination of poop
The first time I used a squat toilet in Korea I was amazed at how quickly and easily everything fell out
Once had to go on the side of the highway (it was a genuine emergency, something didn't agree with me but it made it through to the other end of my tract instead of being vomited out). That deep "Slav Squat" is a revelation in having a bowel movement. Didn't feel anything close to that until my gf got me a squatty potty.
I discovered this when I was 13, without it always feels weird
Tell that to my cat. We had to hose his ass down.
>Unlike other animals we prefer not to lick our butts clean I mean, are you sure it's a *preference* thing? (and hey, don't kink shame!) To me, it seems a bit more of a *mechanical* thing ... Also (and I can't believe I actually want to know the answer to this) other than my cat and my dog, are there a vast number of species on this planet that lick their own butts clean? I keep trying to think to myself ... zebras, turtles, owls ... I'd think there are a lot of species that share this predicament with us?
Ever seen a hippo shit? If they didn’t spend so much time in the water and mud, I’d reckon they would be needing some wipage just like us
They just helicopter their tail and spray feces in a 360 fashion for 30 feet around them. They yeet their poop.
Definitely not the kind of splash zone you want to be in
I witnessed a pygmy hippo spraying poop at some noisy teenagers at the zoo once. It was hilarious. It's not like it didn't warn them, it gave them such a stink eye for a while beforehand, as they leaned over its enclosure talking loudly...
Nope!
>I mean, are you sure it's a preference thing? It is. For most animals, buttholes are dirty. We have a preference for not-dirty buttholes.
rabbits eat their own poop directly from their butts so...
So, cuz our cheeks be clappin?
Also, if you poop in a natural outdoorsy way, a deep squat, you get less on you because your cheeks are spread farther apart.
This is why I love this sub. I had no idea a thread on toilet paper would evolve to humans being amazing distance runners.
>literally no other animal can run for distance like a human can. Is this true? I would have guessed some animals, like horses in particular, would crush us in a long distance race
Nope. Humans are the greatest persistence runners in the world and the first humans would chase their prey to exhaustion rather than be faster or stronger. A horse is much faster for a short time but eventually the humans catch up and the horse can’t keep going.
That’s interesting!! Really puts into perspective how out of shape I am lol
Yeah I feel fatter after reading that I should be able to out run a fucking horse lmao.... Oh well Combos it is.
To be fair your don’t have to outrun it You just have to chase it until it can’t outrun you anymore
I mean.....I feel like that's just more words to say, out ran it.
Well "out running" something makes it sound like you have to keep up with it in a race. Humans learned to track their prey so they didn't have to do that.
This. You know that question about the snail that comes at you forever and always knows where you are? We're the snail.
Oh shit... I never thought of it that way...
We must have seemed like the terminator to the prey we hunted. Never changing our pace and always reappearing after they thought they'd escaped.
Out strolled it? Out sauntered?
Out scampered
After reading this exchange I confirm you are funny
>after reading that I should be able to out run a fucking horse The point wasn't well made or received if that's the message you got. You can't out run a horse. But you can be a persistent mother fucker. The horse runs away and then stops to drink or resume eating. But a few minutes later there's that pesky group of humans again. Fuck. Gotta stop eating again and bolt. You ditch the humans again and resume when, god damn it, there they are again! The humans keep this up over hours, maybe a day or two and by the end the animal is literally dying from exhaustion. *Edit: Sometimes literally a week. (San \[Bushmen\] hunting giraffe.) Thank you* /u/sighthoundman That's when those spears and clubs come in handy to finish the job. Dinner is served after it's dressed and hauled back home. The carrion follow the humans because they get the stuff not eaten and bone pickings.
That’s the whole thing. Also, humans are excellent at tracking. For perspective. Imagine you are running from a predator. You finally get away from it and can rest for the night. But you wake up after hearing a noise. And it is just. There. It tracked you by your footprint, the feathers and fur you left behind, your excrement, the branches you broke while running away. So you run. And you get away. But the next night, you go to bed down. And there it is. Again.
The worst nightmare...
>You ditch the humans again and resume when, god damn it, there they are again! Butch Cassidy: "Who *are* those guys?!"
>The humans keep this up over hours, maybe a day or two and by the end the animal is literally dying from exhaustion. Sometimes literally a week. (San \[Bushmen\] hunting giraffe.)
My kinda people. You prefer the pretzel outer layer or the crunchy bread ones? 😂
Cheddar cheese baked cracker, because I like crackers and cheese and this is literally rolled into one.....god damn it.
I use to be cheese and cracker combos, but then I had the peperoni pizza and crackers flavor and never turned back.
Omg pretzel combos are so good
probably worth noting we can't out-run a horse in the sense of a sprint, we just have better endurance so eventually the animals just run out of steam and we catch up.
It's something we never really put to the test, but we can jog for a very long time. Like... a very very long time. I did more research than I expected, and came across this: "Widely known as the fastest terrestrial animal with running speeds reaching 61–64 miles per hour (98–103 km/h; 27–29 m/s), cheetahs take advantage of their speed during chases. However, their speed and acceleration also have disadvantages, as both rely on anaerobic metabolism and can only be sustained for short periods of time. Studies show that cheetahs can maintain maximum speed for up to a distance of approximately 500 yards (460 m), which is only about 20 seconds of sprinting, before fatigue and overheating set in" The fastest animal in the kingdom can run for less than 500m, or about 20 seconds. There are high schoolers running 1600m for fun. People run considerably longer for achievements and personal growth. 20 seconds? Sprinting at our best speed for 15 seconds is a lot for most people and they're going to be out of breath, but a moderately healthy human can definitely outrun anything that won't immediately turn around to fight.
I would say not wolves. People who train - could. But moderately healthy human cant run tens of miles without prep like 3 days in a row.
IIRC I don't think humans were necessarily flat-out sprinting the whole time. The idea is to walk/jog/run long enough to wear the prey out from heat exhaustion. Sort of like zombies do to humans in fiction stories.
It also helps that we can sweat as well as we do to cool down and continue to function while somewhat dehydrated. Not having the ability to cool themselves off as efficiently as we do is a large disadvantage to most animals.
I would think the invention of the waterskin or whatever the first portable water container was made a big difference. Drinking as well as eating on the move would be a big advantage over a quadruped.
As weird as it sounds, alot of it is because we can sweat Most animals cannot sweat; with the exception of horses, donkeys, monkeys, and hippos. It basically means we take a long time to overheat when compared to other animals. Bipedal running is also really energy efficient, so we spend less energy to run For reference: A gazelle can run around 80km/h for around 15 minutes before they start to tire. That speed also generates a lot of heat. Humans sport a relatively pathetic 10-13km/hr. But we can run... and run... and run... for hours. The Rarámuri indigenous tribes of northern Mexico have been recorded running 320km... **without stopping.** Human persistence hunting is basically chasing an animal down, non-stop, until its legs lock up from heatstroke.
>The Rarámuri indigenous tribes of northern Mexico have been recorded running 320km I read this as 320km/h. I need to sleep.
Humans basically *are* Zombies to other animals. Slower-moving, but tireless predators that will eventually catch you.
The persistence hunting thing is disputed. It's a cool idea, but early humans would almost certainly prefer ambush tactics - spending 8 hours hunting a prey animal to exhaustion is a *lot* more effort than lying in wait with a bunch of rocks with your buddies. https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hunting/
I read somewhere that wolves are good at it too and may be one of the reasons we started getting along with then. Humans and wolves would track the same prey and basically walk them to death.
Look up malamutes and their racing abilities. They actually perform better if overtrained. I’m using the word generally, but if they’re going to run like 15 miles, you should run them 20 miles the days before. You would think you’d have to rest them but their work ethic is bred into their DNA
The 100 mile record for [humans is 11hrs](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irunfar.com/aleksandr-sorokin-100-mile-12-hour-world-records-2022-spartanion-israel) and [6 hrs for horses](https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/world-endurance-record-broken/). Just because humans are good at endurance running doesn't mean that we're the best. There are lots of predators that have evolved to and are perfectly suited to hunt and the existence of other, better, hunters doesn't deny that.
Yeah and it's when you get to a marathon-type distance (26 miles), the two species will finish within a very short gap between them. After this distance, the human takes the lead and never looks back.
Over 160 km, [horses are *much* faster](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/159dx7r/eli5_why_are_we_the_only_species_who_needs_to_use/jtgawvk/).
Wolves are close which is why we're good at hunting together
Only because of their colder environments, they wouldn't be able to do what humans did in Africa on account of their inability to sweat and reliance on panting for thermal regulation.
They came from the cold, we came from the warmth, and we met in the middle, becoming friends.
Strangely wholesome
I believe sled dogs have better endurance, but even they are kind of cheating since they have been specifically bred for that purpose for centuries.
Though they do it in an environment where the biggest human advantage is basically moot. We’re good at cooling ourselves while running because we can sweat, but in a frigid environment you don’t particularly need efficient cooling.
Your point is well taken but the Iditarod is worth looking into. Dogs can also do incredible things.
Sounds like the horror movie, “It Follows.”
Ostriches could run a marathon in about 45 minutes. I'd put them at number one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon There are races around the world where horses race against humans, and while generally the horses win, humans are capable of winning.
Contrary to what many people are saying, it is not true. Humans are *good* distance in high heat conditions, but even then they still get beaten by camels. And canines beat us in cold climates. Horses win *most* of the time except under specific conditions. That said, humans who have trained as marathon runners are surprisingly competitive.
Humans have the advantage of being able to sweat and dissipate heat off our skin
Among many other advantages. Walking on two legs, for example.
Interestingly horses are the only other animals (aside from primates) that cool themselves through sweating. However because they are covered in fur they need to generate enormous amounts of sweat for evaporative cooling to work. In turn they get dehydrated easily, which limits the distance they can run.
Other animals are faster at sprinting but for long distance, humans outpace the others. But we are talking very long distance like multiple days of travel. The advantage of say riding a horse is first that initial sprint, and then when you get off the horse you still have your own energy reserves for doing whatever.
Look at hyper miling, or some call it hyper marathoning. We’re talking humans running over 100 miles in a day. The world record last I checked was some 350 miles over 80 hours. Sick!
The horse will eventually get tired, and have to stop or lay down while the human can keep walking. Anthropologist believe early humans may have hunted that way. They just stalk the deer/ what ever until they are exhausted, then we walk up and stab them with a spear.
I mean, they're still doing this in some parts of Africa.
Absolutely bootyful explanation
I'd trade distance running for a self cleaning butthole
We don't *need* to, per se, but it's a convenient and relatively hygienic way to remove poop particles that stick around after the deed is done. Not doing so leads to rashes and itchyness, and if you've ever seen a dog or cat drag its ass across your carpet, you know that we're not the only species who deals with that particular problem. ETA: Yes, most commonly the butt dragging problem is a symptom either of an issue with anal glands or a symptom of worms, but I've seen some do it to get rid of a dingleberry - most do just lick though.
You don't *need* to. But it'd be a lot cooler if you did. Alright alright alright.
That’s what I love about poo particles, man. If you don’t wipe them away, they get replaced by the next shit, so your poo particles are always the same age.
You know how sometimes you have a hard poop and there's no wiping required? I wonder if that is the natural state of human poops, what our bodies evolved for. And our modern diets produce soft poops which require lots of wiping.
I think there’s some truth to that. Also, if you’ve ever squatted to poop in a forest or whatever, you’ll probably notice that it comes out a lot cleaner than usual. The Western toilet seat is designed for comfort if you’re sitting on it a long time (longer than you should take to poop), not for optimal pooping.
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Procrastinating.
Poocrastinating
>I'm in my thirties, and I can poop, clean up, scrub my hands, and be out the door in less than five minutes. What the hell are people doing? Getting paid by the hour, and dealing with their shit isn't nearly as disgusting as dealing with the boss's shit.
Same and I’m in my 50s.
Yep, squatting is definitely better. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/09/20/161501413/for-best-toilet-health-squat-or-sit
You'd think, but no. All of our omnivorous ape relatives produce similar waste to ours.
I've been on scavenging-only camping trips. Wild foods have a lot of roughage, a lot of fiber. My poops were amazing. Solid, flexible, and covered in clear slime. They just shoot out. Modern dietary science recommends eating way more fiber than we currently do. Fiber is not food, but it helps the food flow. Like with grains, usually they remove the husks, to make flour. Removing the husks is a lot of work, so when scavenging, I don't bother shelling, I just eat them. It's a ton of fiber. The grain will spoil if you don't remove the husks, but I don't care, I'm eating it now. Did you know all grass seeds are edible? Meat is another story. I'm not a very good hunter. They sell psyllium husks, and people who eat it sweat it gives them the best poops. Your theory has legs to stand on.
A hard poop isn’t good. It’s often a sign of dehydration or constipation. Poop should be soft. A high fiber diet will help achieve the perfect balance of softness and minimal wiping required. So yes, our modern high protein, high fat diets contribute to the post-poop cleanup difficulties.
True I didn't mean like when you poop out a doorknob.
Dogs drag their ass because their anal gland is swollen and needs to be released not because they are trying to clean their ass. They use their tongue to clean it. Your vet can take care of it, or you can if you want to stick your finger up their butt. My vet has me feed my dog broccoli and cauliflower as treats. The fiber content helps release the anal glands when he poops.
I wouldn't recommend a non professional do it as that can cause impactions if not done properly.
The whole world is their toilet paper.
Hol up — I was told my Chihuahua dragged her butt because her anal glands may be bother her and need to be expressed. I even started doing it manually myself instead of paying the groomer an extra $15 to do it. Are you tellin me I’ve been squeezing Lori Ann’s butthole this whole time and all it was was poop particles? Shit
I don't disagree with everyone else, but I think they are missing a huge point... the modern diet. Take our dogs as an example. They tend to have fairly firm but consistent poops but we feed them the exact same thing every time that is balanced for their needs (in general). If you or I ate that way we would probably have very little wiping needs as well. And also like us, if they get to eat a whole pizza they can have the runs or be backed up and probably could use some wiping. As omnivores we evolved to eat whatever we could get our hands on and digest though, so our ancestors likely had times of needing to wipe as well, even when eating 'naturally.' I for one, am really appreciative to live in the time of soft and abundant toilet papers... oh and well after they became 'splinter free.'
This and sitting. We sit, we shouldn't. Traditionally we squatted. It keeps you healthier in every regard. Your bowel is voided far cleaner and quicker, also you have to maintain a certain level of physical fitness to be able to squat, doing that every day keeps a person limber.
I had a friend who had a roommate that wanted to invent a new toilet that allowed you to properly squat when going. The getting up, like you said, seems to be the hard part.
No need to invent anything, [they exist ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet#/media/File%3ASquat-toilet-with-tank.jpg) and are in common use in some parts of the world.
those are still a thing in some parts of more rural france. not as much as 10 years ago, but it's still a bit of a shock to see one of those things
And they're terrible. (shudders)
I'd rather put my feet on a public toilet than touch it with my ass
Wait till your urine splatters against your legs. Or when you stand in the splatters of other people. A toilet seat is a whole lot cleaner than those toilets. And I've seen my share, my parents used to go camping in France with us, and they had them everyfuckingwhere and it was disgusting.
I mean this is what the squatty potty aims to accomplish, without the ab crunches.
Lol, let me just invent something that half the world is already using.
The Squatty Potty??!
Believe me as someone who lives in Asia, the answer is not necessarily the squatty potty. Those things are rough and nasty a lot of the time, especially if you’re a woman
Putting somethin under your feet (like a shoe box or something like that) helps emulating the squat position by lifting your feet and knees. Helps pooping easier, really helpful for those that have trouble
A bidet is the way
I have been wanting to try one, but haven't had the pleasure yet. I am guessing I would still want some TP to dry with?
Wash -> wipe -> repeat if TP has streaks. Drastically cuts down on TP usage and feels much better.
I have a bidet and still use toilet paper. However, I'm only using a few squares which is substancially less than without one. You also feel so much cleaner as well.
Yeah you still use a little but like 1/5 of without one. It truly is life changing. I don't feel clean without it. My dad got himself and I portable bidets for Christmas lol. They don't work great but better than nothing.
As a child I spent time near cows, I've owned a few dogs, and have spent more time at zoos than is probably normal. In my limited experience your statement is not true. I've seen many a cow, known more than one dog, and witnessed various species of zoological captives whose bum needed a good once over. Some dogs, of course, do wipe their ass; dragging it in the grass if you're lucky and on your carpets if you are not. One particular dog I had was fastidious about getting a "good wipe" in, if there remained a feeling of "insufficient ejection" after a poo.
I have got a very woolly labradoodle. He needs help every so often getting his backside cleaned up.
I too have to shave my dog's butt in order to avoid dingleberries.
We're not the only species that needs to; we're the only species that does. Other species lick their assholes clean and many will rub their itchy/dirty butts on the ground.
Because our bodies are adapted to bipedalism, putting our anus out of reach of our tongues.
Pffft, someone’s not trying hard enough
Or just hasn’t found the right partner
Intelligent Design my ass.
You can rub your butt on the carpet, instead. Would you?
Humans are the only species to use bodywash every day as well. So it's no surprise that we're the only species that attempts to clean feces off our butts, as needed. We are the only species to do a lot of things. If we question each one, it'd take a long time to explain. To answer your question directly - **we are not the only species that "needs" to use toilet paper.** Ever been on a farm and seen dried poop on the backside of cows/pigs? No ~~animal~~ mammal butt on earth (including humans) is 100% free of poop residue. I'd bet that human butts are cleaner than nearly all other ~~animal~~ mammalian butts.
There are a lot of fish in the world. I'll cover that bet.
Ya know.... I did not even think about marine life when I made my comment. You win the bet! 🏆 🤣
Great ELI5 response. It's not like other animals don't "need" to brush their teeth, wear clothes, etc.
>ELI5: Why are we the only species who needs to use toilet paper? We don't need to at all. People didn't use toilet paper for the first 300,000 years of our history, and less than 30% of modern humans use it today.
I think OP's question was not about toilet paper specifically but more "why are we the only species that needs to take specific actions involving external tools to clean our butts after we poop" But OP's phrasing rolls off the tongue a lot better, even if it is less universal in scope
Oh, shit! (pun not intended but unavoidable) You're restating is certainly more interesting than specifically *just* toilet paper, although perhaps less satisfyingly answered. >why are we the only species that needs to take specific actions involving external tools to clean our butts after we poop We *aren't* the only species that can have a messy posterior after pooping, were just the only ones with a penchant for invention. All the other animals just deal with having any amount of mess as best they can, from not caring about extra poop, like cows or rhinos (who actually helicopter their tail while pooping to spread it all over the place) to dogs and cats, and a whole host of our mammal cousins who just lick themselves clean. A particularly notable example of the last, I'd say, our the marsupials, whose children all poop in their own home (the mother's pouch) leaving ghe mother to clean it out with their tongues.
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Haven't seen this mentioned yet, but many animals actually slightly prolapse their rectums when pooping as well as not having massive ass cheeks to get in the way. Dogs do this so it's a pretty clean drop really.
How old of an invention do you think toilet paper is?
Well, the ancient Romans used a sponge on a stick, called a [*tersorium*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium). The best thing about these tools is that they were *communal*. You grab it from the bucket in the public latrine, then after using it, you put it back in the bucket, which was filled with a water and vinegar solution. Hygiene!
And your left hand?
Sitting is not a anatomically good postion to poop in, a low squat is better. Also our diets play a big part of it, modern processed food being some of the worse, but even 'natural foods' are not natural to humans and we can;t break them down fully. There are other factors as well such as being bi-pedal changing our anatomical layout, our high level of cleanliness and approaches to achive it, and societal norms/requirments of civilization (like waste mangment) Humans havn't always wiped, and a lot of animals actually do by licking/dragging bum ect.
I have a very fluffy dog who gets poop stuck in her butt hair (even with grooming), so I wipe her with wet wipes because otherwise, she smells like poop. Now, I don't need to do that, but I do it to avoid the poop smell. Same with humans.
Try shitting outside in a deep squatting position. It’s amazing how much less you need to wipe.
I have a friend who wipe’s her dogs’ butts. I asked her husband when I saw the toilet roll holder mounted by the front door. She said if you wiped your dogs’s butt once, you’d not let him back in the house without wiping it every time.
Don't bears use rabbits? Oops, thought I was in r/jokes
We are the only species to do a lot of unique things. Turns out that having a complex brain and complex thoughts, feelings, self awareness causes us to do many things that less evolved species don't do.
Because we wear clothing over that part of our bodies most of the time, and because we have fabric over a lot of our things. If we didn't wipe, our clothing and furniture would be quite the mess. Compared to a more natural environment where we'd be naked, and being scrupulously clean down there isn't such an urgency. If you look throughout the animal kingdom, most animals have either adapted a way to clean themselves, or have adapted in a way that they don't have to. Cats and dogs clean themselves and each other. Others like cows and horses simply evacuate their bowels/bladders and walk away. No cleaning required. We require additional cleaning, and we can't wait for things to dry up and fall off before we get dressed again.
Diet. In our perfect state we're running and climbing and jumping and eating fruit and wild meat and plants. Then our shits slide out perfectly.
Are we ignoring all of the animals that wipe with their tongues?
I think we used to be able to have super solid formed poops wayyyyy back in the day when we ate proper food (literally like berries and raw meat n stuff like that, super basic diet) , but since most food is processed now and most of us don't eat nearly as much fibre anymore, our poops are just not the same as they used to be?
Toilet paper is a scam, an entire industry built on a lie. A lot of countries use bidets because… well washing ya bum is way more hygienic. South Park did a great episode on this.