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Listen, dogs are awesome. We love them. They’re man’s best friend. But, seriously, can they stop with the poop eating? What’s up with that?
It turns out that some scientists out there had that very same question, and concern, about why pups eat their own poop.
Does it hurt them? Make them sick? Or does it just affect us, putting our gag reflexes to the test every time they do it?
Two recent studies cited by Live Science this week help shed some light on this mystery.
According to a 2018 study published in the Journal of Veterinary Medicine and Science, of the 1,400 dog owners that were surveyed, 16% of those people’s dogs ate poop at least six times over the course of the study.
Now, here comes a word you probably didn’t know: coprophagia. What is coprophagia? It’s a fancy way of saying someone or something eats poop. I tell you this because its a word used a lot in that study.
For example…
“No evidence was found relating the coprophagy to diet or the dog’s age,” the study found. “Coprophagic dogs were as easily house trained as non-coprophagic dogs, suggesting a normal aversion to faeces. Coprophagic dogs were more likely to be reported as greedy eaters than non-coprophagic dogs. The reported success rate of the commercial products and behaviour modification approaches was close to zero, indicating that the behaviour is not readily changed. The coprophagy was overwhelmingly directed at fresh stools, defined as being no more than 2 days old.”
The main hypothesis they came up with for why dogs eat poop is that ancestral wolves used to do it to keep their den clear of intestinal parasites.
Another study cited by Live Science from 2019 and published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior took a look at which breeds of dogs and which sex are most likely to eat their own poop.
It turned out that Shetland sheepdogs at 41% were the biggest “offenders” while not a single poodle in the study was reported to have partaken.
As far as sex goes, 16% of female dogs ate poop, while just 11% of males did.
Then there is the question of why do some dogs eat the poop of other animals. The answer, according to co-author of the 2018 study Melissa Bain, a veterinary behaviorist at UC Davis Veterinary Medicine, they just like the taste of it.
The good news is that no matter whose poop they are eating, it’s very unlikely to cause your dog any actual harm.
For some tips on how to get your dog to stop eating poop, visit LiveScience.com.