Poop

It’s strange but drawing animal excrements is more interesting than it might seem. Animals – we humans too – never move their bowels each time in exactly the same way. The challenge thus is to find the ‘perfect’ stool for each species. And a good fibreless meal is not the same as a feast of figs, and this is reflected in the variety of forms, colours and textures that can be found, for example, in the excrements of the small carnivores inhabiting Catalonia (genets and beech martens) that also eat a lot of fruit. Likewise, old excrements that have been exposed to the sun for days don’t much resemble fresh ones.

Once the ‘model’ stool has been decide upon, then it’s a question of drawing the texture – granular, shiny, velvety, loose, …

The result: a useful tool for naturalists that can be used to reliably identify some of the signs left behind by our mammals.