All About Poo British English Teacher

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ENGLISH FOR TEENAGERS · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)
ALL ABOUT
POO
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1 Warm up
Answer the following questions.
1. How much poo do you think all the animals in the world produce every day?
2. What do you think happens to it all?
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ALL ABOUT POO
2 Key vocabulary
Part A: Match the following words to their definitions.
1. accumulate (v) a. opening in a person’s bottom
2. furry (adj.) b. covered with a lot of hair
3. constipation (n) c. substances which can make a bomb
4. anus (n) d. get more of something over time
5. explosives (n) e. easy to hurt
6. supposedly (adv.) f. thought to be true
7. sluggish (adj.) g. confusing, hard to understand
8. vulnerable (adj.) h. slow-moving
9. baffling (adj.) i. infrequent bowel movements
Part B: Write the words from Part A in the correct gap in the following sentences. Note the form of
some of the words is different.
1. I always feel in really hot weather. The heat saps all my energy.
2. The doctor gave her patient advice on how to deal with her .
3. He felt very emotionally after his divorce.
4. dogs are naturally warmer than dogs without hair.
5. She was by the foreigner’s accent. She couldn’t understand a word.
6. The is the end part of the digestive tract.
7. white tea is even healthier than green tea.
8. I’ve too many books and I just don’t have room in my bookcase
for them all.
9. are often used in mining.
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ALL ABOUT POO
3 Reading: prediction task
You are going to read an article (page 4) about pooping habits. First, look at the photos of these
animals and try to answer the following quiz questions about them.
bat sloth
wombat panda
civet cat
1. Which animal poos around 40 times a day on average?
2. Which animal does a poo-dance once a week?
3. Which animal’s poo is used to produce ridiculously expensive coffee?
4. Which animal’s poo is used to make explosives?
5. Which animal has cube-shaped poo?

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ALL ABOUT POO
Check your answers by reading the following text.
Surprising pooping habits

Various animals defecate in a diverse ways, some of them are truly intriguing.
1. Dancing Sloths 3. Poopy Pandas
Sloths are famously sleepy creatures, and that counts Pandas don’t exactly have a varied diet. In fact, they
for their sluggish digestive system too. Constipation spend up to 16 hours a day just eating bamboo. And
is their norm. They defecate only once a week and it what goes in, must come out. So, it helps to explain
is actually the only reason they need to come down why pandas also spend a lot of time pooping. They
from their tree bedrooms, despite the fact that it defecate 40 times a day on average.
makes them more vulnerable to predators.
They can defecate while eating and even while
They stand on their hind legs at the trunk of a tree
sleeping! And their dung looks either yellow (if
and do what has been named a ‘’poo dance” by some
they’ve been eating bamboo stalks) or green (if
experts. They shake their bodies from side to side
they’ve been eating bamboo leaves).
while digging a hole to put their poo into. Then once
they finish the job, they do another little dance in 4. Explosive Bat Scat
order to cover it all up. Bat poop, also known as ‘’guano” has explosive
But despite the dancing, it doesn’t sound fun for properties - literally. Their defecation contains
them. They can lose up to a third of their body weight potassium nitrate and it has been collected and used
in one bowel movement! for years to create explosives. It has been used in the
American Civil War and during World War I.
2. Weird Wombats
Wombats are adorable furry marsupials native to There is even a town in Texas named Blowout
Australia – with a unique baffling habit. Their poo because of the bats. It has a cave where 1,000 bats
comes out cube-shaped. In fact, they poo out nearly lived and their guano accumulated over many years
100 of these little cubes every day, despite having until one day there was a thunderstorm. Lightning
round anuses. hit the mouth of the cave and ka-boom!
Scientists scratched their heads in confusion about 5. Cat Crap Coffee

this phenomenon until they finally got to the bottom
Would you like some delicious coffee? How about
of it after much study. The animals have special
wild Kopi Luwak coffee beans for only £500 for 250
elastic digestive systems which shape the poo into
grams? That’s right. It’s not a typo. That’s the actual
squares before it comes out.
price of this ‘crappy’ coffee found in the excrement of
But, why? Well, wombats use their poo to mark their the Asian civet cat.
territory by placing it on the tops of rocks and logs.
Civets eat coffee beans and these are fermented
And square poo won’t roll! Isn’t Mother Nature a
inside their digestive system. Supposedly this creates
genius?
exceptional coffee. So their scat is collected and sold
for a pretty penny.
Sources: ScienceAlert, Tushy, Wikipedia, Listverse, Harrods

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4 Discussion
Discuss the following questions.
1. What surprised you the most about the facts from the reading?
2. How many different ways to refer to poo can you find in the article?
3. Do you know any other interesting animal facts?
5 Video: intensive listening
Part A: Watch the video from 00:00 to 02:50 and write down the three types of dung beetles they
describe.
1.
2.
3.
Look at the extracts from the video which describe the three types of dung beetles. Also look at the
glossary underneath each extract. Try to predict where the words belong in the script. Then, watch
the same part of the video again, listen and check if you were right. Complete any that you left blank.
Extract 1:
lays a single egg roll sculpt

1 2
Dung rollers a ball of dung, and using their back legs, quickly
it away from competitors. Potential partners jump on the ball, and once the ball-maker has selected
3
their mate, the pair dig their dung ball into the soil. Once it’s been buried, the female
within the dung ball.
Glossary
lay an egg (phrase) - produce an egg
sculpt (v) - shape something

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Extract 2:
array brood clumps

fray guardians’ masquerading
mate pat sneaking
1
Tunnelers have a different approach. Digging underneath a , some drag dung
2 3
down into the soil and pack it into known as balls,
dung balls, or dung "sausages", depending on their shape and size. Male tunnelers sport a spectacular
4
of horns to fight each other for control of these tunnels, which they then
5
defend until the female has laid her egg. Some male tunnelers avoid the by
6 7
as hornless females and into tunnels
8 9
to while the heads are turned.
Glossary
array (n) - a large collection of things
brood (adj.) - a number of young creatures produced at the same time
clumps (n) - a group of similar things together
fray (n) - an exciting competitive situation
guardians (n) - protectors
masquerading (v) - disguised or pretending
mate (v) - have sex to procreate
pat (n) - a mass of material
sneaking into (v) - go into somewhere secretly

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Extract 3:
dwellers larvae offspring predation

pupa riddle vulnerable weathered
1
The third group of dung beetles, , take the most straightforward approach,
2
laying their eggs directly into a dung pat. This makes their more
3 4
to than those of the tunnelers and rollers.
5 6
As the feed, they the dung pat with tunnels,
7
leaving remains that are quickly colonised by bacteria and fungi and away.
Inside a tunnel, ball, or pat, once the larvae hatch, they consume the dung before metamorphosing
8
into a and then an adult beetle.
Glossary
dwellers (n) - type of dung beetle
hatch (v) - come out of an egg
larvae (n) - worm form of an insect
metamorphosing (v) - change into an adult insect
offspring (n) - babies of an animal
predation (n) - preying on an animal
pupa (n) - inactive form of insect before becoming an adult
riddle (v) - make holes into
vulnerable (adj.) - able to be harmed
weathered (adj.) - worn by the weather over time

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Part B: Choose the correct answer.
1. How much waste do all animals in the world produce every day?
a. as much as the height of the Victoria Falls
b. as much as the width of the Victoria Falls
c. as much as the amount of water falling over the Victoria Falls
2. How many species of dung beetle are there?
a. 6,000 b. 7,000 c. 8,000
3. How much dung can a dung beetle bury in a single night?
a. 250 times their body weight
b. 350 times their body weight
c. 450 times their body weight
4. What is a dung beetle’s first task?
a. to smell dung b. to find dung c. to bury dung
5. How many beetles can be attracted to a pile of elephant dung?
a. 2,000 b. 3,000 c. 4,000
6 Video: vocabulary
Match the vocabulary with the synonyms.
1. inadvertently a. chance of happening
2. livestock b. full of
3. dispersers c. strong
4. potent d. spreaders
5. likelihood e. achieves
6. riddled f. unintentionally
7. accomplishes g. begin to grow
8. germinate h. farm animals

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7 Video: part 2
Part A: Besides removing dung, what other ways do you think dung beetles help the world? Tick the
ones you think are likely to be mentioned in the second part of the video.
1. They spread seeds.
2. They help reduce greenhouse emissions.
3. They keep other bugs away from plants.
4. They add water to the soil.
5. They help bring nutrients to plant roots.
6. They keep the soil warm with their bodies.
7. They secrete protective saliva onto seeds.
Part B: Watch part two of the video, from 02:50 to 04:33 and check your predictions with a partner.
Which ones did you get right?
8 Talking point
Discuss the following questions.
1. Did anything surprise you in the video? What was it?

2. What do you think would happen if the dung beetles all disappeared?
3. Are there any other insects or animals that are also underappreciated?

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9 Language point: euphemisms
Look at the table below.
What is a euphemism?
• It is a word or phrase that is used in something direct. This is usually to make

something sound less direct and more pleasant.
euphemism for "unemployed" is "between jobs"
• Although some euphemisms can be used to express things more informally,

irreverently or humorously.
euphemism for "short" is "horizontally-challenged"
• There are many toilet-related euphemisms

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Now put the following euphemisms into their correct categories. Then cover the list and try to see
how many you can remember.
bathroom conveniences do a number one do a number two
go potty have a tinkle nature calls potty
powder my nose powder room relieve myself restroom
see a man about a dog the little boys room the little girls room the loo
the smallest room to do a wee-wee to pee use the conveniences
1. toilets:
2. general for using
the toilet:
3. urinating:
4. defecating:
10 Optional extension/roleplay: dialogue
Read the following dialogue between friends. Use euphemisms in the appropriate places and in the
correct forms.
Note: This is definitely not a realistic conversation! It’s for practice only.
Connor: Hey Leo. Take a seat and I’ll get you a drink.
Leo: Hi Connor. Thanks for the dinner invite. It’s nice to see your new house at
last. Faith’s coming in a minute. She’s just getting something from the car.
1
But, I’m sorry would you mind if I (urinate)
first?
2
Connor: Sure. Do you know where the (toilet) is?
3
Leo: I saw a door in the hallway. Is that the (toilet) ?
Connor: Yes, it is.
Faith: Hi Connor. Sorry I’m late. Also I would talk but I’m really desperate. Could
4
I use your (toilet) ? I really need to (urinate)
5
. I had loads of water on the way here.
6
Connor: Sure, but Leo is already in the (toilet) .
Faith: Damn it! He beat me to it. Okay, I’ll just have to wait. I hope he’s not
7
(defecating) in there. He always takes ages.
8
Connor: Well, he did say he was only going to (urinate) .
Oh look, here he is!
Faith: Thank goodness, I was about to wet my pants!
Connor: So, how about that drink?

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11 Extension/homework tasks
Task 1: Find out some other toilet euphemisms or slang terms in English. Bring three to share next
time.
1) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Task 2: How do astronauts go to the toilet in space? Watch the following video and answer these
questions.
a. What is the most important feature of the astronaut toilet?
b. What do they do as a courtesy for the next person?
c. How often do they change the solid waste container?
d. What do they do with urine?

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ALL ABOUT POO
Transcripts
5. Video: intensive listening
Speaker: Somewhere near you, an animal is defecating. In fact, each day, the animal kingdom
produces roughly enough dung to match the volume of water pouring over the Victoria
Falls. So why isn’t the planet covered in the stuff?
Speaker: You can thank the humble dung beetle for eating up the excess. Capable of burying 250
times their body weight in a single night, these valiant insects make quick work of an
endless stream of faeces
Speaker: Over 7,000 known species of dung beetle run clean-up duty across six continents
—everywhere except Antarctica.
Speaker: A dung beetle’s first task is to locate dung. Some live on the anal regions of larger animals,
ready to leap off when they defecate. Others sniff out faeces that animals leave behind. A
pile of elephant dung can attract 4,000 beetles in 15 minutes.
Speaker: So once a beetle finds dung, it must work quickly to secure some of the bounty for itself.
Most dung beetle species fall into one of three main groups: rollers, tunnelers, and dwellers.
Speaker: Dung rollers sculpt a ball of dung, and using their back legs, quickly roll it away from
competitors. Potential partners jump on the ball, and once the ball-maker has selected
their mate, the pair dig their dung ball into the soil. Once it’s been buried, the female lays
a single egg within the dung ball.
Speaker: Tunnelers have a different approach. Digging underneath a pat, some drag dung down
into the soil and pack it into clumps known as brood balls, dung balls, or dung “sausages,”
depending on their shape and size. Male tunnelers sport a spectacular array of horns to
fight each other for control of these tunnels, which they then defend until the female’s
laid her egg. Some male tunnelers avoid the fray by masquerading as hornless females and
sneaking into tunnels to mate while the guardians’ heads are turned.
Speaker: The third group of dung beetles, dwellers, take the most straightforward approach, laying
their eggs directly into a dung pat. This makes their offspring more vulnerable to predation
than those of the tunnelers and rollers. As the larvae feed, they riddle the dung pat with
tunnels, leaving remains that are quickly colonized by bacteria and fungi and weathered
away. Inside a tunnel, ball, or pat, once the larvae hatch, they consume the dung before
metamorphosing into a pupa and then an adult beetle.
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Speaker: Besides clearing dung, the actions of these beetles have considerable ecological
importance. For one, they serve as secondary seed dispersers. Dung from monkeys, wild
pigs, and other animals is riddled with seeds from the fruits they eat. When beetles bury
their dung balls, they inadvertently protect these seeds from predators and increase the
likelihood they’ll germinate. The advantage is so great that one South African plant has
evolved to produce seeds that look and smell like dung to trick beetles into burying them.
Speaker: Dung beetles also play important roles in agricultural systems. Livestock, like cows and
sheep, produce huge amounts of dung, which contains nutrients that can benefit plants.
The beetles break up the dung and tunnel it deep into the soil, bringing the nutrients into
close contact with plant roots. Their services to farmers have been valued at $380 million
a year in the US and £367 million a year in the UK.
Speaker: Dung beetles can even help us battle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions
associated with farming. Microbes living in oxygen-poor livestock dung produce methane,
a potent greenhouse gas. But beetles oxygenate pats when they tunnel into them,
preventing the microbes from producing methane.
Speaker: The dung beetle spreads seeds, helps farmers, and fights climate change —and
accomplishes it all simply by doing its business. Maybe next time you come across some
dung in the forest or a field, you’ll be tempted to take a closer look.
11. Extension/homework tasks
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the toilet of the International Space Station. Let’s say you’re up here
on ISS and you need to go to the restroom.
Speaker: You want to come to this cabin and the first thing you want to do is grab this piece of
equipment and turn this rotary switch 90 degrees to the open position. What that does is
it turns on a fan which creates a suction effect in this hose so that you can use this yellow
element for your number one.
Speaker: For number two the principle is actually exactly the same: suction. We have a solid waste
container here and on top of it is this seat and the solid waste container is connected by
this hose to the same fan so that again the same suction effects allows you to do your
number two in weightlessness.
Speaker: I want to show you how it looks but since we don’t want any bad smells to come out we’re
gonna actually turn on the fan. It’s gonna be a little bit loud. Here we go. Now you can
lift the lid. And there is this seat that sort of looks comfortable but you don’t really sit in
weightlessness so most of us actually prefer to lift this one as well and use directly the
opening that goes into the bag.
Speaker: And in fact there is a bag in here in there, it looks like this, and when we are done with our
business we close the bag and we push it down into the solid waste container and then of
course as a courtesy to the next person we put a new fresh bag inside.
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Speaker: The solid waste container gets changed when it’s full, which is roughly every 10 days for
a crew of three people using it. This one for example was installed on the 61st day of
this year, so probably roughly around day 71 we will have to change it again. But urine
gets recycled so from the pretty complicated hydraulic equipment that is behind here and
makes the use of the toilet in space possible, the urine actually gets directly transferred to
another piece of equipment, which is here in the floor, which is called UPA (urine processing
assembly), which is the first step into turning urine into potable water.
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Key
1. Warm up
5 mins.
Allow the students a few minutes to discuss the questions to warm into the topic.
a. There is no clear total answer to a.
However, as an indication estimates of only livestock excrement worldwide show around 3.5 billion tonnes of
waste a year or around 9.59 million tonnes per day.
In the United States, dogs alone produce around 60 million pounds of waste per day.
In Africa all the elephants produce around 50 million pounds of waste per day.
So there is a lot of animal excrement in the world!
b. It is organic material so it is broken down by bacteria and other microorganisms. It is also used as manure and
is consumed by earthworms, flies and dung beetles among others.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/25/animal-waste-excrement-four-billion-tonnes-dung-poo-faecebook
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/25/animal-waste-excrement-four-billion-tonnes-dung-poo-faecebook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feces
2. Key vocabulary
5mins.
Students should match the vocabulary with their definitions in order to prepare for the reading. Help them with
any unknown words and/or allow them to look them up.
1. → d. 2. → b. 3. → i. 4. → a. 5. → c. 6. → f. 7. → h. 8. → e. 9. → g.
5 mins.
Students then complete the gaps in the sentences.
1. sluggish 2. constipation 3. vulnerable

4. Furry 5. baffled 6. anus
7. Supposedly 8. accumulated 9. Explosives
3. Reading: prediction task
3 mins.
These questions can be done in pairs or small groups. This is a fun quiz to encourage discussion and prime them
for the reading to follow.
1. panda 2. sloth 3. civet cat 4. bat 5. wombat
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5 mins.
Students do the reading and check if their quiz question answers are correct. You may wish to point out that a
variety of words for poo have been used for effect and that the reading has taken a somewhat irreverent tone.
Normally a text would stick to one or two.
Sources:
ht tps://hellotushy.com/blogs/healthy-poop/poop-facts
https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-the-horror-that-sloths-have-to-go-through-every-time-they-poop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_luwak
https://listverse.com/2021/04/13/10-really-weird-facts-about-poop/
https://www.harrods.com/en-gb/shopping/harrods-wild-kopi-luwak-coffee-beans-250g-16267224
4. Discussion
3 mins.
The questions allow students an opportunity to discuss the reading and to look for synonyms for poo.
The ones in the article are:
bowel movement, defecation, faeces, dung, scat, guano, crap, turd
There are even more, of course (eg: stool, droppings). You may wish to ask them if they know any others.
This is also a chance to discuss some of the differences in use and register.
A brief rough guide is as follows:
1) faeces – scientific
2) crap - slang to mildly vulgar
3) turd - slang to mildly vulgar, can also be used to refer to a person in a negative way
4) bowel movement – general term to refer to defecation
5) dung – from animals only
6) scat – from animals only, especially carnivorous mammals
7) guano – from bats and birds
5. Video: intensive listening
10 mins.
Play the first half of the video and have students listen out only for the three types of dung-beetles.
Then allow them some time to read the texts and the vocabulary listed in the glossaries. Then they should watch
the same part of the video again and try to put the words into the gaps.
They could first check their answers in pairs to compare before you go through the answers with them.
Dung beetles:
1. rollers 2. tunnelers 3. dwellers
Extract 1:
1. sculpt 2. roll 3. lays a single egg
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Extract 2:
1. pat 2. clumps 3. brood

4. array 5. fray 6. masquerading
7. sneaking 8. mate 9. guardians’
Extract 3:
1. dwellers 2. offspring 3. vulnerable 4. predation

5. larvae 6. riddle 7. weathered 8. pupa
3 mins.
Now they can do the comprehension questions.
1. c. 2. b. 3. a. 4. a. 5. c.
6. Video: vocabulary
3 mins.
Students match words with their synonyms in order to prepare for the second half of the video.
1. → f. 2. → h. 3. → d. 4. → c. 5. → a. 6. → b. 7. → e. 8. → g.
7. Video: part 2
5 mins.
Ask students to complete the prediction task in pairs before you play the second part of the video.
Play the video and then they can check if their predictions were right.
1. ✓ They spread seeds.

2. ✓ They help reduce greenhouse emissions.
5. ✓ They help bring nutrients to plant roots.
8. Talking point
5 mins.
The talking points allow students the opportunity to respond to the video and discuss their thoughts.
For question a. based on the title of the video they are likely to speculate that the world would be covered in poo.
They could also speculate that that ecosystems and food chains would collapse and the world would not only be
covered in poo but it would be in serious doo-doo.
https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.583675
https://www.businessinsider.com/no-more-insects-disappeared-earth-what-would-happen-2019-8
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.305.5688.1230a
9. Language point: euphemisms
3 mins.
You could start this point by boarding one of the example euphemisms, eg: between jobs (or another euphemism
you choose) and eliciting the meaning. Ask students if they know what kind of language it is and then ask if they
know any other examples. Then go through the content of the box with them.
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Categories
5 mins.
Students can now look at the euphemisms in the box and try to put them into the correct categories. You could
put them into pairs or small groups to do this together. Monitor and help the students. Then students should
cover the table and try to recall as many terms as they can.
1. TOILETS: powder room ≀ bathroom ≀ restroom ≀ the smallest room ≀ the little boys room ≀ the
little girls room ≀ potty ≀ the loo ≀ conveniences
2. GENERAL FOR USING THE TOILET: relieve myself ≀ nature calls ≀ powder my nose ≀ see a man about
a dog ≀ use the conveniences ≀ go potty
3. URINATING: to pee ≀ have a tinkle ≀ do a number one ≀ to do a wee-wee
4. DEFECATING: do a number two
It would be a good idea to point out to your students that many of these would be used to humorous effect or
only in certain situations. Give them some more everyday phrases (eg: to go to the bathroom).
See additional notes in brackets below.
toilets: powder room (usually said by women), potty (for children),conveniences (formal, might be seen on a sign);
general for using the toilet (activity not specified!): powder my nose (usually said by woman for humorous effect),
go potty ( for children);
urinating: have a tinkle (usually said bo older women), to do a wee-wee (childish)
10. Optional extension/roleplay: dialogue
5 mins.
Stress to students that this is not intended to be a realistic dialogue but it is designed to help them practice the terms and
to have some fun with it. You could ask them to do this in pairs and then you can choose one or two pairs to ‘perform’
their version of the dialogue.
The dialogue should end up a little different depending on which options the student’s pick.
Here is example:
1. see a man about a dog 2. the loo 3. powder room 4. bathroom

5. relieve myself 6. little boys room 7. doing a number two 8. do a wee-wee
11. Extension/homework tasks
Students can extend the lesson by looking up additional euphemisms for toilets.
They can also watch the video about going to the toilet in space and answer the questions. It is a fascinating video
from the International Space Station. The transcript is also given below.
a. suction b. put a new fresh bag inside

c. roughly every 10 days d. recycle it into potable (drinking) water
Learn without forgetting! vii

All About Poo British English Teacher

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All About Poo British English Teacher

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HEAAADERLOGORIGHT

ENGLISH FOR TEENAGERS · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

Answer the following questions.

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ALL ABOUT POO

Part A: Match the following words to their deﬁnitions.

1. accumulate (v) a. opening in a person’s bottom

2. furry (adj.) b. covered with a lot of hair

3. constipation (n) c. substances which can make a bomb

4. anus (n) d. get more of something over time

5. explosives (n) e. easy to hurt

6. supposedly (adv.) f. thought to be true

7. sluggish (adj.) g. confusing, hard to understand

8. vulnerable (adj.) h. slow-moving

9. baﬀling (adj.) i. infrequent bowel movements

3. He felt very emotionally after his divorce.

4. dogs are naturally warmer than dogs without hair.

5. She was by the foreigner’s accent. She couldn’t understand a word.

6. The is the end part of the digestive tract.

7. white tea is even healthier than green tea.

9. are often used in mining.

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3 Reading: prediction task

1. Which animal poos around 40 times a day on average?

2. Which animal does a poo-dance once a week?

3. Which animal’s poo is used to produce ridiculously expensive coﬀee?

4. Which animal’s poo is used to make explosives?

5. Which animal has cube-shaped poo?

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Check your answers by reading the following text.

Surprising pooping habits

1. Dancing Sloths 3. Poopy Pandas

Scientists scratched their heads in confusion about 5. Cat Crap Coﬀee

Sources: ScienceAlert, Tushy, Wikipedia, Listverse, Harrods

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Discuss the following questions.

5 Video: intensive listening

lays a single egg roll sculpt

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array brood clumps

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dwellers larvae oﬀspring predation

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Part B: Choose the correct answer.

a. as much as the height of the Victoria Falls

b. as much as the width of the Victoria Falls

c. as much as the amount of water falling over the Victoria Falls

2. How many species of dung beetle are there?

a. 6,000 b. 7,000 c. 8,000

3. How much dung can a dung beetle bury in a single night?

a. 250 times their body weight

b. 350 times their body weight

c. 450 times their body weight

4. What is a dung beetle’s ﬁrst task?

a. to smell dung b. to ﬁnd dung c. to bury dung

5. How many beetles can be attracted to a pile of elephant dung?

a. 2,000 b. 3,000 c. 4,000