Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Coprophagia |
CoprophagiaNoun1. Eating feces; in human a symptom of some kinds of insanity. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| Domain | Definition |
Health | Eating of excrement. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Coprophagia is a behavior sometimes observed, with considerable disgust, by dog owners. Hofmeister, Cumming, and Dhein (2001) write that this behavior in animals has not been well-researched, and they are (as of this writing) preparing a study. In a preliminary online paper, they write that there are various theories explaining why animals consume other animals' feces. According to one theory, dogs might do this in order to get attention from their owners. On a different theory, dogs observe their owners picking up feces, and imitate this behavior. Other theories postulate that a dog might eat feces in order to prevent the scent from attracting predators, and that dogs might eat feces simply because they are hungry.
Young elephants eat the feces of their mother to obtain the necessary bacteria for the proper digestion of the vegatation found on the savannah. When they are born, their intestines do not contain these bacteria. Without them, these elephants would be unable to get any nutritional value from plants. Hamsters eat their own droppings, this is thought to be important as a source of vitamins B and K.
The behaviour is also seen in rabbits and related species. These herbivores do not have the complicated ruminant digestive system, so instead they extract more nutrition from grass by giving their food a second pass through the gut.
Coprophagia is a highly hazardous practice in humans, usually associated with coprophilia. Consuming other people's feces carries the risk of contracting a wide variety of diseases, including Hepatitis and AIDS. Even consuming ones own feces involves risk, as the bowel bacteria are not safe to ingest. The same advice applies to related sexual practices, such as rimming.
Coprophagia in animals
Coprophagia in humans
References
External links
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Coprophagia."
Synonym: CoprophagiaSynonym: coprophagy (n). (additional references) |
| "Coprophagia" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Coprophagia" is used about 3 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 3 | 202,518 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
coprophagia | 54 |
coprophagia dog online | 5 |
coprophagia dog | 5 |
coprophagia human | 4 |
coprophagia online | 3 |
coprophagia human in | 3 |
coprophagia cure | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-c-g-h-i-o-o-p-p-r" | |
-3 letters: agraphic, approach. | |
-4 letters: apocarp, charpai, choragi, graphic, haircap, paprica. | |
-5 letters: agaric, carhop, coppra, coprah, grappa, orgiac, orphic, paraph, pariah, picara, picaro, raphia. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-c-g-h-i-o-o-p-p-r" | |
+2 letters: polarographic, topographical. | |
+4 letters: paleogeographic, topographically. | |
+5 letters: antipornographic, parapsychologies, parapsychologist, phonocardiograph, phonographically, photographically, pornographically, prosopographical. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)43 6F 70 72 6F 70 68 61 67 69 61 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
|
| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
|
| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
|
Morse Code (1836) (references)-.-. --- .--. .-. --- .--. .... .- --. .. .- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000011 01101111 01110000 01110010 01101111 01110000 01101000 01100001 01100111 01101001 01100001 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)C o p r o p h a g i a |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0043 006F 0070 0072 006F 0070 0068 0061 0067 0069 0061 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
|
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)3781828481827467737567 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Usage Frequency 4. Expressions: Internet | 5. Anagrams 6. Orthography 7. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
