What is in an animals droppings?
But do not try this at home! Animal droppings (egesta) contain bits of the food the animal has eaten but not been able to digest, so by looking at an animal’s droppings we can often learn a lot about what it eats. For example, otters live in rivers and eat fish. An otter cannot digest fish scales so these are in its droppings. By looking at the fish scales in an otter’s droppings (spraint) we can tell what sort of fish it has eaten. At one time anglers often killed otters because they ate salmon and trout and other fish which fishermen like to catch – the anglers thought that if they killed otters there would be more fish. But there was not, there was actually less. When scientists looked at the otters’ spraint they found that although otters did eat some salmon they ate mostly eels, and eels eat baby salmon. So killing the otters meant there were more eels and so less salmon. Now most anglers do not want to kill otters. (It is illegal to kill them in any case.) Most species of otter l
