Pooseum

Name: Pooseum
Address: 22 Bridge Street, Richmond, TAS, 7025, AU
Telephone: 0413 802 206

At the Pooseum, talking about poo is not taboo. In fact, we think it’s fascinating stuff. Come and see this unique exhibition!

08/05/2026

Unlike humans and other mammals, flies have no teeth to break down food. Instead, they use a process called extraoral digestion. When a fly lands on food, it regurgitates saliva and digestive enzymes onto the surface, breaking solid food down into a liquid “soup” that can be sucked up through its straw-like mouthpart, called a proboscis.

Much of this liquid is stored in a specialised sac called the crop, part of the fly’s foregut. The crop acts like a temporary storage tank, allowing the fly to hold water, nectar, or partially digested food before it moves into the midgut for full digestion. Enzymes in the regurgitated fluid begin breaking food down even before it reaches the stomach.

But this system also explains why flies are considered unhygienic. Because the crop stores food rather than digesting it completely, it can harbour bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens picked up from garbage, faeces, and decaying material. When flies regurgitate crop contents onto food, these microbes can be transferred as well.

Some fly species even use regurgitation for cooling. During hot weather, they perform a behaviour called “bubbling,” producing a droplet of liquid from the crop and holding it outside the mouthparts. As water evaporates, the droplet cools, and the fly then reabsorbs it, helping lower its body temperature.

02/05/2026

Beaver s**t resembles compressed wood shavings or sawdust when dried, reflecting their high-fibre, woody diet. The cylindrical or slightly oval pellets are commonly found in or near water around lodges (dome-shaped beaver homes) and dams, where beavers defecate.

Beavers engage in cecotrophy, a behaviour in which they re-ingest soft, nutrient-rich faecal pellets (cecotropes) directly from their a**s to maximise nutrient absorption. The harder, dry s**ts are not re-eaten.

28/04/2026

Ant larvae have neither eyes nor legs and rely on adult worker ants to provide a constant supply of food. Worker ants feed larvae through trophallaxis, sharing regurgitated liquid food, and in many species also provide processed solid food. The larvae grow rapidly, moulting between developmental stages as they feed.

Ant larvae generally do not defecate during this stage, which helps prevent waste from accumulating in nursery areas. Instead, they retain waste in their hindgut until they prepare for metamorphosis. Just before a larva transforms into a pupa, it expels its accumulated waste in a single pellet called meconium. In species that spin cocoons, the meconium is deposited inside the cocoon, where it remains isolated from the nest environment and helps maintain hygienic conditions. In species that do not spin cocoons, the meconium expelled at pupation is managed by worker ants through cleaning and waste removal, including transport to designated waste areas.

18/04/2026

For thousands of years, Alaska Native peoples, including Inuit, Yupik, and Unangan (Aleut) communities, created waterproof garments known as gut parkas, or kamleikas, using cleaned intestines from animals such as seals, walruses, and whales. These garments were extremely lightweight, breathable, and fully waterproof, making them ideal for kayaking and harsh Arctic weather. Sheets made from the intestines were carefully stitched together using specialised waterproof seams to maintain protection in extreme weather conditions.

Until the introduction of GORE-TEX in the early 1970s, most commercially available waterproof clothing was made from materials such as waxed or oil-treated fabrics, rubberised textiles, and later PVC-coated cloth. While PVC offered excellent waterproofing, it did not allow perspiration to escape, creating a clammy or sweaty feeling for the wearer.

Intestinal membranes, on the other hand, contain microscopic pores that allow water vapour (perspiration) to escape while preventing larger rain droplets from entering. Modern fabrics like GORE-TEX were designed to replicate this balance of waterproofing and breathability using microporous membranes.

📷 Anchorage Museum

15/04/2026

Wombat poo on Maria Island, Tasmania, demonstrating progressive ageing, from recent deposits to older, weathered, and bleached samples.

10/04/2026

Since 1899, the funicular railway in Fribourg, Switzerland, has been running on wastewater from the city’s sewer system. The funicular connects the upper city with the lower Neuveville district along a 121-meter track with a steep 54% gradient. Rather than using electricity or fossil fuels, the system operates using gravity and a counterweight mechanism powered by wastewater.

At the upper station, approximately 2,700 litres of wastewater are pumped into a tank beneath the descending car, making it heavier than the car waiting at the lower station. Gravity then pulls the heavier car downhill, simultaneously lifting the lighter car uphill via a cable and pulley system. Once the car reaches the lower station, the wastewater is released back into the sewer network. The journey takes about two minutes at just over 4 km/h, carrying up to 20 passengers at a time.

The Fribourg funicular is a protected historic monument and the last wastewater-powered funicular of its kind in Europe. There is just one drawback: the use of sewage as ballast can cause a rather unpleasant odour, especially during warm weather.

https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2024/09/the-fribourg-funicular-powered-by-wastewater/

06/04/2026

South American hoatzins are commonly known as stinkbirds because of their bad breath, and not just ordinary bad breath. They smell strongly of fresh cow manure, a result of their unique digestive process.

Nearly all herbivorous and omnivorous birds ferment plant material in their caeca, specialised pouches branching off at the junction of the small and large intestines, where microbial fermentation takes place. Hoatzins, however, are the only known birds with ruminant-like foregut fermentation, similar to that found in cows. Unlike in mammals, this fermentation does not occur in the stomach but in the hoatzin’s enlarged, two-chambered crop and lower oesophagus, where bacteria break down tough cellulose.

This process releases gases that the birds expel through burps, producing their distinctive manure-like odour. While most birds digest food quickly, hoatzins digest their food incredibly slowly. A single meal can take up to 45 hours to pass through their digestive system.

The hoatzin’s unusual smell appears to be advantageous, acting as a natural defence mechanism, as predators tend to avoid the birds, possibly mistaking them for rotten or toxic prey.

31/03/2026

It has taken over a decade and a considerable amount of effort to acquire a range of specimens that no museum anywhere in the world has ever displayed.

The Pooseum is proud to announce the addition of five of the rarest and most scientifically significant droppings to our already extensive collection of faeces.

27/03/2026

In 2025, wildlife photographer Nick Kleer captured a curious leopard encountering a dung beetle in South Africa.

23/03/2026

Marion Robertson, winner of the 2025 Poo-tastic Tasmanian Paint Off, has made a wonderful new contribution to our museum’s ever-expanding art collection. For the portrait of Albert Einstein, she used a variety of unusual materials: Boobook owl poo for the lighter sections of the face and hands, and the Nobel Prize medal; python poo for the darker sections of the face and hands; blue-and-gold macaw poo for the jacket; and quoll poo for the pipe and lower section.

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) was a pioneering physicist best known for reshaping our understanding of the universe. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the photoelectric effect, which demonstrated that light behaves as both a wave and a particle, though he is more widely known for developing the Theory of Relativity. Beyond his scientific achievements, he valued creativity deeply, famously stating, “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” a sentiment often associated with both scientific and creative thinking.

In 2025, I visited the Einstein Museum in Bern, an exhibition covering over 1,000 m², which gave me a deeper understanding and greater appreciation of Einstein’s private life, his career, and his work. Anyone visiting Switzerland should take the opportunity to explore this fascinating museum.

Address

22 Bridge Street
Richmond, TAS
7025

Telephone

0413 802 206

Website

http://www.pooseum.com.au/

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