Feces, urates and urine, or "poop" as many owners collectively call it, are important indicators for your reptile or amphibian's health. Knowing what normal, healthy excrement looks like can help you detect sudden changes in your animal's health, as infections can often be detected by changes in fecal or uratic matter.

The Components of Reptile Poop

Unlike mammals, that have an "exit" each for both genitourinary and digestive systems, reptiles and amphibians (as well as birds, some fish, and monotremes- the egg-laying mammals) have one opening, the cloaca. The digestive, urinary and reproductive tracts open into this vent.

First, the thicker, brown matter are the feces. This is the waste expelled from from the intestinal tract, and consists of some undigested some partially digested, and some waste products from food. The mass should be from light to dark brown, not so soft that it breaks apart while being deposited, and about the same shape throughout. Although it does not have a pleasant smell, unhealthy feces will smell noticeably worse.

The second part, excrements of the urinary system, has two sub-components, but both are not noticeably present in all species. Urates are the white to pale yellow nitrogenous wastes that are often a small amount of paste next to the feces or laced in with the feces. Urine is the clear, slightly viscous fluid that is sometimes excreted with the rest, and often in protest by chelonians being handled. Reptiles and amphibians excrete insoluble uric acid in place of or along with urea to conserve water, since their kidneys are incapable of concentrating urine. Typically, animals from arid regions excrete much more uric acid and have drier feces than species from environments that have a great abundance of water. These animals often excrete larger amounts of urine, particularly if they eat a high-moisture diet or if they are aquatic or semiaquatic.


Amphibian Poop

Unlike reptiles, amphibians will not produce urates. Feces will appear thick and brown like with reptiles, and urine should be clear and watery.

What Does Healthy Poop Look Like?

As strange as it may sound, being familiar with your pet's regular poop is a great way to know how to detect illnesses. Things to notice include: Colour: The feces are usually from light to dark brown, and urates are white to very pale yellow. This varies with the animal's diet, but a noticeable change in colour when you have not changed the diet may be a sign of illness. If blood is present, take your herp to a vet immediately! Black, sticky feces that look like tar indicates that the animal is bleeding from higher up in the digestive tract, such as the small intestine. The rest of the digestive system's chemicals transforms the blood into the dark, tarry substance, called melena. This is a serious symptom and the animal must see a vet. Large male reptiles and amphibians may also have thick, whitish seminal deposits mixed in with their urates and feces during breeding season. If you are feeding your reptile lots of carotenoid pigments, either by supplementing the prey with extra beta-carotene or feeding a large amount of orange or red fruits and vegetables, the urates may have a slight orange tinge to them. Consistency: The feces should hold together and not be a pile of "mush." If the feces are mushy and not firm, then the animal may be having difficulty properly digesting its food due to illness or unsuitable temperatures in its enclosure. If there are pieces of partially or poorly digested food in the feces (not counting the occasional portion of an insect exoskeleton, rodent fur or bits of vegetable), it is an indication that something is wrong. Liquid: You should also pay attention to the amount of liquid excreted with the stool. Generally, a healthy reptile's fluids form a circle around the stool about twice the width of the stool itself. Of course, if you know the animal has not been drinking as much water, or if you have fed food with a higher water content, then the amount of fluid will vary. Diarrhea will increase the amount of fluid excreted. Odour: Even though poop smells, it is usually bearable. If you notice an abnormally strong and pungent odour from your pet's excrements, it may be caused by a gastrointestinal infection.

An example of a healthy stool (from a leopard gecko, Eublepharis macularius). Notice the larger portion is fecal matter, and the whitish, thick urates. The fluid has dried in this sample.     When it comes to herps that prefer to defecate in their water dish, it can be difficult to detect changes in the stool. This stool came from a green iguana, Iguana iguana. The urates did not discolour the water, but the stool had been in the dish for several hours and begun to break up.

Why Is Poop So Important To My Vet?

Bringing a fresh fecal sample to the veterinarian is a good idea. Fecal exams are used to determine if your pet has a parasitic infection.

Collecting a fecal sample is easy- just take an ordinary zipper-lock plastic baggie, invert it over your hand, pinch up as much of the brown fecal mass as you can, and revert the bag over your hand. (The urates and urine typically are not necessary, urinalysis is not commonly done on reptiles or amphibians.) You will end up with the feces in the baggie. Close this bag and place it inside another baggie, and label the bag clearly with your name, the pet's name and species, the date of collection, and your phone number. Ideally, the sample should be brought to the vet and tested within an hour of being deposited, but you can leave it as long as overnight in the fridge if you have to. The fresher, the better, though.

You may also want to write down some observations about the feces, since after collecting it, the feces may get a little mushed up. Write down any abnormalities you noticed (consider the list above), and bring it with you to the vet.

When examining your animal's feces, the vet will likely do two tests, and they may sometimes opt for the third:

• Fecal flotation: The feces are mixed with a dense solution, and either allowed to sit so that any less dense materials, including parasites, will float to the top where they are collected on a coverslip. The coverslip is then placed on a slide and the sample is examined under a microscope. This method usually reveals worm eggs, and sometimes worms themselves (but whole worms in the feces is quite rare).
  
• Direct smear: This test is used to detect the presence of protozoa in your pet's feces. A solution is mixed with a sample of fecal matter, then smeared directly onto a microscope slide and examined under the microscope. This method is particularly used to find protozoa, but you may also observe worm eggs and worms, as well.
  
• Fecal sediment: Feces are mixed with saline and filtered several times. The filtrate is then spun in a centrifuge. The large top portion of the fluid is removed, and the remainder, that contains the sediment, is re-mixed and examened under the microscope. This method is useful for isolating dense oocysts ("eggs") of protozoa. Oocysts may also be viewed on the direct smear, but if the smear is inconclusive and the vet suspects a protozoal infection, they may decide to do this test, as well.

 

Last modified: Sunday, March 19, 2006