Here’s How Many Seconds Science Says It Takes To Poop, And Wow, Am I Doing It Wrong

We’ve already shared at HuffPost that you’re not actually meant to sit on the loo for more than five minutes at a time. 

We’ve also written about the fact that, although women tend to have more complications with their BMs, men spend a lot more time on the porcelain throne.

While writing the second article, though, I learned something that turned my world inside out. 

According to some scientists, most mammals (and yep, we’re a part of that) should take no longer than 12 of Gillian McKeith’s own seconds to pass a poop. 

What? Why?

Well, okay, it’s not as exact as that. 

But according to a paper published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in their journal Soft Matter (I know), most mammals take between five and 19 seconds; 12 seconds on average.

The study, called Hydrodynamics of Defecation, looked at a range of mammals of different sizes at Zoo Atlanta. They didn’t study humans.

It found that, from a cat to an elephant, a majority (roughly 66%) of mammals took the same, sub-20 amount of seconds to pass a stool.

Patricia Yang, a mechanical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said that that may be because “The smell of body waste attracts predators, which is dangerous for animals.”

“If they stay longer doing their thing, they’re exposing themselves and risking being discovered,” the study’s main author told New Scientist.

How come it all takes the same time?

Pooping doesn’t work the way most of us think, the study revealed.

We’re not pushing the BMs out like removing toothpaste from a tube; “It’s more like a plug that just goes through a chute,” the study’s lead author said. 

That’s partly because of the mucus that lines our gut and makes it slippery.

Add to that the fact that poop seems to take up a similar amount of space in the gut before it’s excreted across most species (five times the diameter of the mammals’ rectum), and it’s no wonder they exert a similar amount of pressure and take around the same time.

Though, again, the study didn’t look at humans, its lead author said “If it’s taking far longer than 12 seconds, I’d say you should go see someone about it.”

“But you can’t count the newspaper time,” she added.