Evoluntionarilly speaking, how could that kind of reaction possibly be beneficial in life-threatening situation?
Edit: I realise that it probably wasn't the greatest idea to ask this question when the top post in this subreddit is "Help up keep it clean", but it's a genuine question.
Posted Oct 20, 2011, 3:30 AM UTC · edited
It's wrong to point to any one thing and think that because it exists, it must have had an evolutionary advantage. Some things are just side effects of complete systems.
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Seeing your prey crap itself with fright at your presence wouldn't be very intimidating I think.
no but it means that you become a less tasty morsel!
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... It was a genuine question. Couldn't predators just eat the parts not covered in poop. It's not like people crap themselves and have the uncontrollable instinct to smear it all over themselves.
I was being serious, soiling yourself disaudes a predator for a few reasons:
You smell like, well, crap. Edible food doesn't smell like that.
Predators learn quickly that fecal matter, or the smell associated with it, means potentially spoiled meat. They do develop much the same illness as we do from eating fecal matter.
Basically, it's a drastic stress response. When the fight-or-flight response chain is activated, digestion stops and the blood that was previously being used to process food is shuttled out to the skeletal muscles. If there is backpressure in the digestive system and an extreme diversion of blood from the lower GI, the anal sphincter weakens to the point of inadvertent bowel evacuation. The response requires the organism to be fearful for their life however.
Think of it like the anus fainted.
Hmm, that sounds quite reasonable. Thank you for the serious reply.
So it's like the cost of having poop running down your legs is worth the benefit of having extra blood flow elsewhere, rather than the poop serves some useful purpose in this situation.
I was talking out of my ass, but thank you.
Delivering the glycogen stores in the liver to skeletal muscles is faster and uses fewer resources in the body than processing food. I would imagine it is costly in the long-term, but who cares when you gotta get away from the predator NOW.
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