Okay, I’m going to start off by saying I do not want to start an evolution vs. creation thread. Also, I spent a couple of hours scanning the evolution threads to see if this has been addressed before, but I gave up – too much info. Knowing this, please forgive me if this has been covered.
That being said, there’s something that’s been bugging me. We know that the result of evolution is that certain traits or mutations that are advantageous to survival get passed on to future generations (in a nutshell? I know I’ll be promptly corrected if there’s a problem with my statement). One of the things that comes to mind is the Panda’s (or is it a koala??) “thumb.” It’s not really a thumb, but a bony protrusion that helps the animal harvest its preferred food. I know any errors in that statement will be promptly corrected too. I’m too lazy to check my accuracy here.
My question is this:
Why do humans have to wipe their butts?
I’d like to hear some ideas on how evolution came up with this fluke. I mean, all other animals do pretty well without toilet paper, and I would like to know why we have to use it. There’s the obvious answer, that we dont have to wipe. I disagree with that. We do indeed have to wipe. If we don’t wipe, we will be far more… shall I say, messy, than any other creature. It just doesn’t seem fair.
I hope this is in the right forum. I really don’t want this to be a great debate, and I don’t think it’s serious enough for GQ.
I think we have to wipe because we are bipedal - we needed big muscles in our butts that tend to get shit stuck on them when you crap. The advantage we got from being able to run all over the place outweighed the disadvantage of having to reach back there and scrape off dried crap every now and then.
According to How to Shit in the Woods humans only have to wipe because we are anally aware, which makes us retentive. We don’t let the entire fecal episode happen, we stop it by closing the anus partway through, leaving debris, which we have to wipe off. If you practice leaving that sphincter open, you won’t have to wipe.
In other words, it has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with societal issues of propriety.
Hmmm…well it probably happened because we stood up. And by the time we stood up we alreadt had hand and long are so it wasn’t a hindrence (One could see how if one needed to and couldn’t it would be a deterrent to sucessful mating.)
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, three weeks, three days, 2 hours, 11 minutes and 29 seconds.
8283 cigarettes not smoked, saving $1,035.45.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 4 weeks, 18 hours, 15 minutes.
I’ve never seen my cat wipe, but I have noticed he spends an awful lot of time licking down there. Call me anally aware, but I’ll pick wiping over licking any day.
Come on…if we were flexible to lick ourselves down there many of us would never leave the house. I dare say that the internet wouldn’t even be as popular as it is now.
I’ve been wondering about this… What’s protocol around here for using sigs? Is is kosher to pull out someone’s comment and use it for a sig without asking? Would I look like a weinie for quoting myself in my sig?
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, three weeks, three days, 23 hours, 52 minutes and 30 seconds.
8319 cigarettes not smoked, saving $1,039.97.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 4 weeks, 21 hours, 15 minutes.
My friend spent a year in China and he said that when you are squatting over a hole in the floor you only need half the toilet paper you use when you sit down on the shitter. But I bet you can’t squat the whole time you’re reading the paper.
I can’t remember when a thread made me laugh this hard!
The danger in not wiping after you shit (aside from social dangers) is from fecal coliform bacteria, which can cause disease in ourselves or others our asses come in contact with. Is it possible that, when we were bipedal apes on the savanna, we either got rained on more often or spent more time in streams and watering holes, and so had plenty of running water to wash away our corny fudge?
Do other primates wipe, or are they prisoners of No. 2? It might be illuminating to know.
