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Biology 75 Online
OpenStudy (kainui):

Does poop stinking imply that our ancestors ate poop? Since eating poop is unhealthy, the ancestors which developed a distaste for the scent of poop went on to be more successful than the apes that found the scent more appetizing, since they were healthier and could reproduce more passing on their genes eventually reaching us.

OpenStudy (aaronq):

Lots of animals eat poop, so it's very plausible that our ancestors ate their own and/or other's.. additionally, lots of older people with mental disabilities (e.g. Alzheimers) eat their poop regularly. In some cultures they ferment it and make wine.. At first glance, it seems like having superior olfactory performance (e.g. higher chemoreceptor density) would be advantageous but you'd have to investigate the toxicity of the organism's waste and the mortality rate after excrement consumption. Only then could you grade the effect of "a better sense of smell" on fitness of an individual and selection for those genes. I hope this was a serious question lol

OpenStudy (kainui):

Yeah it was, I couldn't think of a reason why I would find crap to smell bad. If this wasn't the case, then I can't really see why it would ever develop in the first place. Similarly, I think apples taste good. Surely it's because it's full of carbohydrates and a bunch of nutrients. If I get rewarded for eating these as a form pleasure I'm more likely to eat them and since eating them helps me live it makes sense that this would get passed down while people who didn't enjoy sweet things would tend to die off since they'd be less inclined to eat healthy things. (Obviously this developed before the invention of cake.)

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