5 Animals Whose Bathroom Habits Are A Sci-Fi Movie

5 One Worm Has Hundreds If Not Thousands Of Butts

Ramisyllis multicaudata is a sea worm that seems to be first invertebrate to realize that it lives in Australia. Knowing that it's only a matter of time before it gets eaten by a necro shark or knife-jellyfish, the worm decided to get itself a suit of protective armor: a marine sponge (still not even the top 5 weirdest armors of all time.) Ramisyllis burrows into a sponge, then grows its body throughout the labyrinthine nooks and crannies of its host, sort of like branches of a tree. Specifically, the acassia tree. Or the asspen. Or butteye. The point is, whenever the Ramisyllis bifurcates and grows a new branch, that branch always ends with a butt.

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The realization that Ramisyllis effectively twerks itself inside another living creature aside, this is interesting because the worm has hundreds upon hundreds of body-branches. One specimen had over 500, though scientists believe that number can go as high up as 1,000, and each one of them is able to shake what its momma gave it. With each bifurcation, Ram Jam's internal organs and nerves also split, so all those butts are fully functional, meaning that to open a can of Whoop-Ass on Ramisyllis, you will first need to stop at a Costco and shop by the pallet.

Throughout all this, the worm retains one mouth which connects to its multitude of poop chutes. Though, to be fair, we've never actually seen its poop, which makes scientists sad, those odd ducks. Scientists don't actually understand all that well how the worm eats and sustains itself with just one tiny intake hole and close to a thousand evacuation hatches. Luckily, there is another aspect of the Ramisyllis' assitude that they can focus on: the butts can eventually transform into brand-new worms. When Ramisyllis wants to procreate, its battery of butts transforms into genitals, after which they grow eyes and brains, detach themselves and swim away, looking for other butt-worms of the opposite sex to mate with.

So, yeah, Ramisyllis multicaudata literally grows from the asshole out, but don't get too high and mighty because, surprise, so do humans. It's all part of the great circle of life, only it turns out the circle was actually a sphincter all along.

4 When In Danger, The Ananteris Scorpion Will Literally Drop It Like It's Hot ("It" Being Its Ass)

Here's something that people don't realize about scorpions: THERE'S ONE ON YOUR BACK RIGHT NOW. But seriously, here's another, real thing that people don't realize about scorpions: their butts are not where you think they are.

Their guts actually extend throughout their tail but, don't worry, it doesn't mean that every person ever stung by a scorpion also got an injection of its butt juice. Potentially lethal venom is one thing but poop? No, thank you. The scorpion's anus actually opens up around the tail's fifth section, right before the stinger. Neat, huh? Well, it's actually not that neat for the rare South American scorpions of the Ananteris genus, which are one of the scorpions that can detach their tails when they feel threatened.

A lot of animals perform on-the-spot amputations to avoid predators: lizards, spiders, cephalopods. Scorpions usually don't but the Ananteris guys are a very unfortunate exception because once they offer a bit of tail to a potential predator, it effectively leaves them without an anus ... which doesn't grow back. 

So, what do they do? Not much, because not being able to poop basically leaves the scorpions shit out of luck. Their abdomens will continue to swell with built-up poop as the arachnids wander around their environment for up to eight months, surviving on tiny insects since they no longer can hunt with their stingers. Eventually, the animals will die like their ex-wives said they lived: full of shit.

The thing is, though, those scorpions have no one to blame but(t) themselves since their butt amputations are voluntary. In tests, when grabbed by the tail, anesthetized scorpions heeded Samuel L. Jackson's warning in Jurassic Park and held on to their butts. It's like they somehow knew that disposing of their butts would, ironically, eff them right in the a.

3 Some Whales Hunt With "Anal Syrup" Butt Sacs

A lot of stuff resembles other, unsavory stuff, like how all those therapist inkblots always look like your parents fighting. But you usually keep that stuff to yourself, unless you simply don't give a what, like the guy who named the "sperm" whale.

But, weirdly, it turns out that whoever came up with the name actually went with the less disgusting bodily fluid for their inspiration, especially in the case of the pygmy sperm whale (Kogia breviceps). See, that animals could very well have been called “the pygmy anal syrup whale.”

Pygmy sperm whales, together with their close relative the dwarf sperm whales (Kogia sima), have a sac located right off their colon which collects dark red/brown liquid that some scientists refer to as "ink" and which non-cowards call "anal syrup." For years, the accepted wisdom was that this liquid was literally the ink from the cuttlefish the whales feed on, and which they apparently can store and release in order to startle their pray and hunt better. Early 1900s scholars even noted that the liquid left cuttlefish ink-like sepia smudges on their notebooks. (Notebooks that, today, should probably be handled while wearing two pairs of industrial-grade rubber gloves.)

Most recent analyses of the pygmy whale's butt ink revealed that its main ingredient is, oh wow, what a shock: poo. That's right, the pygmy whale hunts using weaponized diarrhea and a bunch of early 20th-century scientists were JUST TOUCHING ALL THAT LIQUID POOP AND SMEARING IT ON THEIR BOOKS AND WE WILL NEVER FEEL CLEAN AGAIN.

By the way, a separate attack-shit sac is very much not standard equipment for whales. It's a unique evolutionary butt development that also happens to make the animals smell so bad, one scientist once described a dead pygmy whale as one of the foulest smells they have ever had the misfortune of smelling. And remember, scientists spend years trapped in college dorms with geeks and nerds, so they have a pretty solid frame of reference for bad smells.

2 Rosacea Might Be Caused By The Butt-Less "Poop Bomb" Bugs Livings On Your Face

Alright, we know we kind of yelled wolf before with the scorpions but, no, really, you actually do have tiny little bugs living on your face right now called mites. They are technically arachnids -- basically making them tiny little spiders/scorpions (please stop screaming) -- and two of the roughly 48,000 species known to science, Demodex folliculorum and Demodex brevis, are exclusively found on humans. Specifically, their faces. They are actually so common to our species that they were probably the first invertebrate to ever visit the Moon.

The name "demodex" literally means "burrowing in fat" because these worm-like creatures with eight stubby legs live in your oil-filled pores and it'd be bad enough if all they did was just live there. But, no, these mites get around, literally, laying eggs in your skin, raising families, and eventually dying. Via poop explosions.

The Demodex mites can be described a lot of ways. Gross, existentially terrifying, dyno-mite if you're feeling sassy. But "butt-having" is not one of them. The animals don't have anuses because Taro Gomi goddamn lied to us all about how everyone poops. Demodex mites can't poop. They are literally incapable of giving a shit. All they can do is dig deep into your hair follicles, feast on whatever they find there, and just keep getting more full of crap until they die and release a lifetime of accumulate feces all over your face like a shit bukkake. There's probably a porn term for that, but our browsing history is cursed enough as it is.

There's a very good chance that all those poo-splosions are what's causing your skin problems. This is still being investigated but some scientists think that the bacteria from the anally-challenged Demodex mites' poop is one of the main causes of rosacea, the skin condition that causes redness and swelling of the face. It affects millions of people around the world but it's actually still not understood all that well, though the proposed Demodex link might point us towards a possible future treatment. All super well and good. In the meantime, we'll be taking an industrial sander to our faces while yelling "Unclean!"

1 Skipper Caterpillars Have Butts Capable Of Shooting Crap Missiles

Poop can be a very dangerous thing in the animal kingdom. It's basically a smelly wireless announcement letting every predator in the area know what's on the local menu and where to find it. Different species have evolved different ways of dealing with the problem. Cats like to bury their poop while dogs -- bless their hearts -- prefer to eat it while thinking that they're bravely protecting you from hyena attacks or whatever. And then there are the skipper caterpillars.

These bugs use a quick surge of blood pressure to squeeze their loads through "a hard, hatchlike plate" in their butts that allows them to propel their poo with such force, it apparently makes a hilarious "plink, plink" noise when it hits the walls of a plastic container. With these WMDs (Weapons of Mass Doody), the caterpillars are able to get their snitch-poop far away from them, sending predators on a wild goose poop (goop?) chase. 

They apparently get better at mastering their anus projectiles with age, as opposed to humans who develop frayed "We're not talking anymore" relationships with their backsides the older they get. Not skipper caterpillars. Their seniors are masters of shit-slinging, with one skipper's butt being able to launch his ass-munition a whopping 153 cm.

That distance would honestly be a little impressive with a human, but considering the tiny size of the bugs, "that's the equivalent of a 76-yard field goal in football," according to one researcher, beating the official NFL record by 13 yards. As a bonus, if someone managed to propel a football from their ass that far, no one on the other team would dare try and catch it. And that's the only reason why the NFL opposes the creation of skipper caterpillar/human hybrids, the absolute cowards.

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