Why are humans the only members of the animal kingdom that use toilet paper (beside the obvious fact that invented it and have the “intellectual” ability and dexterity to use it)? This may also be an ethnocentric question, but regardless of what you use to clean your ass, the question remains: why do we need some extra “tool,” be it TP or a bidet or a hose or a tabo, to maintain personal hygiene down there. Could you imagine if we didn’t? What kind of world would that be? Utter disaster. But look at dogs; dogs don’t use TP and 80+ percent of the time after they take a shit their butthole is pristine. Their ex-bowel contents neatly taper off into a chocolate carrot and then they’re on their way.
For humans? Whether you’re a clumper or folder, you are lucky if you can get away with using less than 4 slices. No denying there is the occasional squeaky-clean deposit, where 0 TP is needed, but you still need to use at least 1 piece to check (unless you are just an absolute monster).
Part of me thinks it’s diet. If we ate more fruits and veggies, our poops would probably be cleaner. Dogs and cats eat barely any leafy greens and they don’t seem to have an issue. So then maybe is physiology? But why on earth would they have a more advanced digestive tract then us? They probably don’t, it’s just their GI system is more in-tune with their diet compared to humans. The diet of average western human is very different from what we were built to be consuming, so maybe that’s why? And so early humans seldom had the problem and so had no need for toilet paper.
Part of me also thinks it has to do with our anatomy. Our butts are way bigger than pretty much all other animals, relative to our size that is (the main reason being because our glutes need to be big to keep us upright all the time). Maybe that makes it more difficult. Or alternatively, maybe our voluptuous cheeks helped conceal some of the stank between proper cleanings prior to the invention of TP and the Toto BT784B.
Whatever the reason may be, the point is humans are just strange creatures.
I recognize that this whole post is imbued with my own privilege and western bias, and that there are populations in our cities and around the world that do not have access and/or are being actively limited access to hygiene resources. This is all written as a random stupid thought I had which hopefully was apparent, but I think it’s still important just to be mindful of the broader picture of the world we live in.
nANIMOv 