Name: 大便如何塑造世界 (How Poop Shapes the World)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:05:52.000Z
Duration: 3 min 55 s
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Drop a plastic bottle in the recycling bin,
and it might one day become something totally

We don't think about number two becoming anything.

But all over nature, the waste of other animals
re-enters the great circle of life.

Here's how poop shapes the world we live
in.

Viewed up close, corals are tiny tentacled
animals.

But those living polyps sit on mountains of
coral skeletons made of calcium carbonate.

When parrotfish eat coral, the bony bits they
can't digest make their way back to the

We're talking one metric ton, per fish,
per year.

Enough to make up a big part of some of our
favorite beaches.

Near the ocean's surface, marine algae absorb
sunlight and carbon dioxide to make energy

But like terrestrial plants, they need nutrients
like nitrogen and iron to get the job done.

Giants like whales and whale sharks answer
nature's call in a big way, pumping out

more than 50,000 liters of nutrient-rich waste
in a single go.

Clouds of whale poop carry 10 million times
more iron than seawater, so where whales “go”

And when those plankton die, the carbon stored
in their bodies piles up on the ocean floor,

eventually becoming things like shale and
oil.

Phytoplankton are so small that billions can
fit in a bucket of seawater.

But altogether, they absorb millions of tons
of carbon from the atmosphere and give off

Much of the ocean's other waste falls to
the deep sea in clouds called marine snow

where it feeds animals like the vampire squid.

But the poop elevator doesn't stop at the
basement.

Deep divers like sperm whales hunt squid near
the sea floor, then return to the surface

to breathe…
and poop, recycling nutrients from the abyss

Ocean poop won't cure climate change, but
without enough recycled nutrients, dying plankton

One plankton die-off during the Cretaceous
period may have had a hand in oceans losing

their oxygen about 94 million years ago, causing
a mass extinction that lasted five hundred

Poop can even move nutrients from the ocean,
onshore.

Birds that feed on fish airdrop fecal fertilizer
when they fly back over land.

Ancient reptiles like dinosaurs and pterosaurs
would have done the same thing.

Enriched soil allowed plants to flourish like
never before, and their seeds were spread

far and wide by the “movements” of monstrous
fruit-eating mammals.

Without those prehistoric poopers, the scat-egories
of lifeforms we see today may have looked

Some plants still struggle since the animals
that used to carry off their seeds are now

Passing an avocado pit is pretty painful if
you're not a giant ground sloth, which you

Plenty of modern animals are still carrying
the load, though.

After clearcutting rainforests, fruit-eating
bats and birds can act like flying Johnny

Where they poop is where new rainforests grow.

Down in the soil, a typical earthworm population
recycles around two tons of organic matter

All this waste keeps terrestrial ecosystems
healthy from top to bottom.

So from the forests to the oceans, we know
our planet's lungs breathe easier thanks

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大便如何塑造世界 (How Poop Shapes the World)

struggle

thrive

ancient

plenty