By invertebrates butterflies feeding on a lump of feces Coprophagous insects consume and
redigest the feces of large animals. These feces contain substantial amounts of semidigested food, particularly in the case of
herbivores, owing to the inefficiency of the large animals' digestive systems. Thousands of species of coprophagous insects are known, especially among the orders
Diptera and
Coleoptera. Examples of such flies are
Scathophaga stercoraria and
Sepsis cynipsea, dung flies commonly found in Europe around cattle droppings. Among beetles,
dung beetles are a diverse lineage, many of which feed on the microorganism-rich liquid component of mammals' dung, and lay their eggs in balls composed mainly of the remaining fibrous material. Group living and aggregation among
common earwigs promotes allo-coprophagy (consuming the feces of other members of one's own species) to promote the growth of helpful gut bacteria and provide a food source when food is scarce. Through proctodeal feeding,
termites eat one another's feces as a means of obtaining their
hindgut protists. Termites and protists have a
symbiotic relationship (e.g. with the protozoan that allows the termites to digest the cellulose in their diet). For example, in one group of termites, a three-way symbiotic relationship exists; termites of the family Rhinotermitidae, cellulolytic protists of the genus
Pseudotrichonympha in the guts of these termites, and intracellular bacterial symbionts of the protists. Among crustaceans, juvenile
Gammarus pulex have been known to feed on adult feces until they have matured enough to eat conditioned leaves.
By vertebrates Lagomorphs (
rabbits,
hares,
pikas) and some other mammals ferment fiber in their cecums, which is then expelled as
cecotropes and eaten from the anus, a process called "cecotrophy". Then their food is processed through the gastrointestinal tract a second time, which allows them to absorb more nutrition. While cecotropes are expelled from the anus, they are not feces, and thus eating them is not called coprophagia. Domesticated and wild mammals are sometimes coprophagic. Some dogs may lack critical digestive enzymes when they are only eating processed dried foods, so they gain these from consuming fecal matter. They only consume fecal matter that is less than two days old, which supports this theory.
Cattle in the United States are often fed
chicken litter. Concerns have arisen that the practice of feeding chicken litter to cattle could lead to
bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) because of the crushed
bone meal in chicken feed. The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration regulates this practice by attempting to prevent the introduction of any part of cattle brain or spinal cord into
livestock feed.
Chickens also eat their own feces. Other countries, such as Canada, have banned chicken litter for use as a livestock feed. The young of
elephants,
giant pandas,
koalas, and
hippos eat the feces of their mothers or other animals in the herd, to obtain the bacteria required to properly digest
vegetation found in their ecosystems. When such animals are born, their
intestines are sterile and do not contain these bacteria. Without doing this, they would be unable to obtain any nutritional value from plants. Piglets with access to maternal feces early in life exhibited better performance.
Hamsters,
guinea pigs,
chinchillas,
hedgehogs, and
pigs eat their own droppings, which are thought to be a source of
vitamins
B and
K, produced by gut bacteria. Sometimes, there is also the aspect of
self-anointment while these creatures eat their droppings. On rare occasions
gorillas have been observed consuming their feces, possibly out of boredom, a desire for warm food, or to reingest seeds contained in the feces. == Coprophagia by humans ==