The Metchnikoff "No-Colon" Theory

Today I was listening to a rerun of Car Talk. I think it was Tom who deduced that if the story about the birds pooping selectively on the white car were true, the birds must be CHOOSING when to poop.

What you need is to dredge up some otherwise useless bit of information that would answer the question. Such a bit popped into my head. Back around the turn of the century there was a brilliant Russian biologist named Metchnikoff (I think he got a Nobel prize) who was otherwise somewhat nuts. He thought that birds had some kind of biological advantage over humans because they didn't have colons; it became a fashionable thing back around the turn of the century for people to have their colons removed.

The thing about the colon is that it is used to store up the poop until you are ready. The implication is that the birds do NOT control when they poop. The other implication is that there was a lot of circulation to the bathroom at some turn-of-the-century dinner parties. This inference may or may not be true.

Frank Oechsli ("exlee")

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