Those aren鈥檛 raisins... Why mountain hares eat their own poo
25 April 2019
On our highest snow-covered slopes lives one of our hardiest mammals: the mountain hare. The hares are perfectly adapted to their environment: their beautiful white coats provide camouflage in the winter and then moult into brown pelts for the summer season.
But as lovable as these hares are, they have developed what we might consider to be a rather distasteful habit: they eat their own droppings.
However, as Landward revealed, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this revolting behaviour.
The mountain hare鈥檚 鈥榙istasteful鈥� diet
The hares devour their freshly-passed droppings.
The hares exist on the heather and grasses that grow in the uplands but they can find these difficult to digest. Nibbling their poo gives them a second chance to take in nutrients they may have missed first time around.
It鈥檚 not only mountain hares!
What do you know about poo?
Have we broken the poo taboo?
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Landward on 大象传媒 iPlayer
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