Coprophagy refers to many kinds of feces-eating, including eating feces of other species heterospecifics , of other individuals allocoprophagy , or one's own autocoprophagy. Feces may be already deposited or taken directly from the anus. In humans, coprophagia has been described since the late 19th century in individuals with mental illnesses and in some sexual acts, [ 3 ] such as the practices of anilingus and felching where sex partners insert their tongue into each other's anus and ingest biologically significant amounts of feces.
Other species may eat feces under certain conditions. The feces of the rock ptarmigan is used in Urumiit , which is a delicacy in some Inuit cuisine. Members of a religious cult [ which?
According to the DSM-5 , coprophilia is a paraphilia where the object of sexual interest is feces. This can involve coprophagia. Ayurveda and Siddha medicine use animal excreta in various forms, with the most important being the dung and urine of the Zebu.
Rubelais studied medicine, but was also a writer of satirical and grotesque fiction, so the truth of this statement is unclear. Lewin [ who? Coprophagia has also been observed in some people with schizophrenia [ 18 ] and pica. Coprophagous insects consume and redigest the feces of large animals. These feces contain substantial amounts of semidigested food , particularly in the case of herbivores , owing to the inefficiency of the large animals' digestive systems. Thousands of species of coprophagous insects are known, especially among the orders Diptera and Coleoptera.
Examples of such flies are Scathophaga stercoraria and Sepsis cynipsea , dung flies commonly found in Europe around cattle droppings. Among beetles, dung beetles are a diverse lineage, many of which feed on the microorganism-rich liquid component of mammals' dung, and lay their eggs in balls composed mainly of the remaining fibrous material.
