omg I pooped a bug... how did I poop a bug?

January 19, 2015 12:27 AM

This is a 100% serious question. I pooped a dead bug. Little, tiny wings, maybe sort of mosquito-looking. It was definitely my poop on the sort of outside of a piece of poo. Just one bug, just one tiny poop - I was constipated. What does this mean? How did it get in there? Should I do anything about it?
posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

You ate a bug. It happens. You should do nothing about it, least of all posting about it to the internet.

This answer changes if the bugs are:

A) Worms.
B) Alive.
posted by disillusioned at 12:29 AM on January 19, 2015 [18 favorites]

It was intact? I'm no expert, but that seems a little unlikely if he had really traveled through your digestive system.
posted by amro at 12:37 AM on January 19, 2015 [25 favorites]

Could it have been some kind of drain fly? If so, it's likely that there was a poop-fly collision outside of your body, in the toilet bowl. We had a problem with drain flies in our bathroom for a while, and it wasn't swarms, just a few here and there, and they didn't look quite like most of the images shown on google (more like this, but eeeeek not so many!). Before we eradicated them, every now and then I would find one sort of hovering inside the toilet bowl. :/

We got rid of them by cleaning all the drains (sink, toilet, bathtub) with drain cleaner and bleach (DANGER note: not at the same time!! used separately!).
posted by taz at 3:29 AM on January 19, 2015 [17 favorites]

Any bug that went into your mouth accidentally would be entirely digested and come out just as poop (not as an identifiable bug), so I agree that the likely alternative is that the bug was in your toilet already.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:31 AM on January 19, 2015 [9 favorites]

I'm no doctor, but it seems unlikely a bug could have traveled through your digestive system and remained undigested. It may have already been in the toilet water, and you pooped onto it. It may have been hovering inside the toilet (seeking water, maybe?) and had a mid air collision with your poop.

(I'm anxiously awaiting the inevitable MeFite who shows up to say "This happened to me, too! And here's how...")
posted by MexicanYenta at 5:31 AM on January 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm anxiously awaiting the inevitable MeFite who shows up to say "This happened to me, too! And here's how..."

I have eaten lots of bugs (very, very tasty bugs) and they just get turned into regular poop. The drain fly explanation above is almost certainly correct.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:44 AM on January 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have found lonely winter mosquitoes in my toilet bowl optimistically looking to lay some eggs in a watery place. You may have drowned ones of these, but I'm sure you didn't swallow it.
posted by Hobgoblin at 6:32 AM on January 19, 2015

All of us are eating bug parts every day. There are acceptable levels of bug parts in commercially processed food because it would be impossible to keep them all out. So if it's consolation you already probably eat insect parts every day.

But not this little guy.
posted by spitbull at 6:57 AM on January 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

A bug could not have made it through your digestive system intact...did you swallow a fake plastic novelty bug?

Either that or I like the idea of the bug/poop collision in the toilet - particularly since you said it has wings, so it could have been flying around in there. Gross.
posted by Toddles at 10:36 AM on January 19, 2015

Are you absolutely sure it was a bug and not, say, a weird-looking piece of poo? I sometimes think I see bugs in my food but they turn out to be something else - a bit or coriander leaf or whatever. Could this be the poo version of that?
posted by hazyjane at 11:05 AM on January 19, 2015

Insect exoskeletons are made of chitin which isn't digested very well in humans. It seems possible a bug could make it through and look intact like a corn kernel does, like hal_c_on said.
posted by traveler_ at 1:59 PM on January 19, 2015

Have you ever seen corn?

What you're seeing is a single, large-ish, unchewed indigestible sheaf of fiber. Not the entire kernel. The internal parts would be exposed to stomach acids and digested.

Similarly, even if you swallowed the insect whole and failed to digest the chitin, all the non-chitin insect parts would be digested and the insect body would fall apart as connective tissue is dissolved and digested. At best, you'd poop a neat little pile o' insect exoskeleton parts, not a recognizable animal.

So yeah, the damn thing was already in the toilet.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:20 PM on January 19, 2015 [2 favorites]