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How old of an invention do you think toilet paper is?
I have a very fluffy dog who gets poop stuck in her butt hair (even with grooming), so I wipe her with wet wipes because otherwise, she smells like poop.
Now, I don’t need to do that, but I do it to avoid the poop smell. Same with humans.
>ELI5: Why are we the only species who needs to use toilet paper?
We don’t need to at all.
People didn’t use toilet paper for the first 300,000 years of our history, and less than 30% of modern humans use it today.
We are the only species to do a lot of unique things. Turns out that having a complex brain and complex thoughts, feelings, self awareness causes us to do many things that less evolved species don’t do.
Because we wear clothing over that part of our bodies most of the time, and because we have fabric over a lot of our things. If we didn’t wipe, our clothing and furniture would be quite the mess.
Compared to a more natural environment where we’d be naked, and being scrupulously clean down there isn’t such an urgency. If you look throughout the animal kingdom, most animals have either adapted a way to clean themselves, or have adapted in a way that they don’t have to. Cats and dogs clean themselves and each other. Others like cows and horses simply evacuate their bowels/bladders and walk away. No cleaning required.
We require additional cleaning, and we can’t wait for things to dry up and fall off before we get dressed again.
Try shitting outside in a deep squatting position. It’s amazing how much less you need to wipe.
Are we ignoring all of the animals that wipe with their tongues?
Because of smeary poops from processed foods?
We gave up the ability to cinch off shits cleanly and in exchange we are able to talk on 2 legs and run very fast for very long amounts of time
Haven’t seen this mentioned yet, but many animals actually slightly prolapse their rectums when pooping as well as not having massive ass cheeks to get in the way.
Dogs do this so it’s a pretty clean drop really.
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