Compare the dung of the pika, musk ox, and carnivore. How are they different? How are they similar?

Size

The pika dung is very small, the musk ox dung is a little bigger, and the carnivore dung is the largest. The size and shape vary depending on the animal that dropped the dung. It’s also important to note that body size does not necessarily correlate with the size of an animal’s dung.

Contents

The contents of dung depend on what the animal eats. Notice how the carnivore dung has a piece of bone in it, while both the pika and musk ox dung have plant material.

Color

The color of dung depends on a few different things, such as what the animal eats. But we also have to consider how these droppings were preserved. The coprolite from the Mammoth Site has been partially replaced by minerals, causing it to have a clay-like texture and tan color similar to the sediment it was found in. The dung found in permafrost stayed dry enough not to fall apart, so it looks very close to how it did the day the animal dropped it.

Shape

All three are rounded, some more than others. Herbivores, animals that eat plants, tend to have much more spherical dung, often referred to as pellets. Carnivores, animals that eat meat, tend to have more elongated dung that typically tapers at the ends. There are some animals with very distinctive dung that makes it easy to identify. For example, wombat dung is cube-shaped!

What can we learn about an animal by studying its dung?

As we hinted to above, studying an animal’s dung can give clues about that animal’s diet. We can deduce that the Mammoth Site coprolite was from a carnivore because of the bone fragment inside it. The other two dung samples, from the pika and the musk ox, contain plant material which indicate both animals were herbivores.

If food remnants within the dung are hard to see, the overall size and shape is a good way to deduce what the animal may have been. The size and shape of the carnivore coprolite indicates that it was left by a mid-sized mammal. Rodents, rabbits, and pika tend to leave small, round to oblong-shaped pellets. Many hoofed animals, like the musk ox, tend to leave larger pellets.