Unlike cows and other ruminants, lagomorphs cannot chew the cud. Grass is incredibly hard to digest because of its high cellulose content. This is known as refection, and it allows the animals to extract extra value from their plant food.

The scientific name of the European badger, Meles meles, is an example of a tautonym, where the genus and specific name are the same.ĭid you know that hares and rabbits eat their own droppings?Īll lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) eat their droppings as soon as they pass. The consistency can vary considerably depending on what they’ve been eating, for example if they’ve been eating a lot of worms, then it is very sloppy. Most poo is deposited in a pit but if the ground is too hard to dig (rocky area) they will leave it on the surface.”Ĭontaining seeds and berries, droppings are usually purple, black or brown in colour and smell foul – “a strong musky, oily smell”. “They also have a latrine area just away from the set as it is one of the things we all do shortly after waking up. “Badgers use their droppings to mark the boundaries of their territory, which can lead to poo wars when badger clans try to ‘out-poo’ each other at the key meeting points of their territories,” says Derek Crawley from the Mammal Society. Location is key when trying to identify badger poo. MammalsĪll illustrations by Mike Langman How to identify mammal droppingsīadger cub coming out of oak woodland. Click on each link below to jump to that animal’s droppings in the guide.

Our expert guide to animal droppings or scats will help you identify which species it comes from. But those of a few species, including the three illustrated here, are more distinctive.Ī careful eye, a guarded sniff and (sometimes) a careful inspection using disposable gloves can often reveal the species responsible for the droppings. While mammal poo is relatively easy to identify, the droppings of different birds often look the same – white splodges containing a paste of waste products. Regularly used poop spots are known as latrines.

Droppings are usually left along territorial boundaries, on prominent features of the landscape or next to discarded prey such as a plucked pigeon, but you can also find them right in the middle of a path, clearing or field.

Scat guide card game