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‘An ocean of poo’
Starting with mouse poop, which was easily accessible at the university lab, the team experimented with different methods of diluting and straining the scat to get the cells “as clean as possible” as quickly as possible, to preserve the freshness.
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After refining a technique for mice, the Poo Zoo set its sights on a bigger goal: elephant dung. While Williams was eager to work on a species that is often central to conservation efforts, its size presented some big problems.

“With mouse poo, you’ve got little dry pellets. With an elephant, you’ve got an enormous bolus that you’re basically holding with two hands. They’re huge. How do you work with that, and turn it into some cells in a tube without it becoming an ocean of poo and liquid?” Williams explains.

Biobanking researcher Dr. Rhiannon Bolton took on the challenge, in partnership with Chester Zoo, which provided access to fresh elephant feces.
“At the zoo, they do quite a lot of work on fecal analysis, be that looking at the microbiome (micororganisms) or hormones within the poo,” says Bolton, which can help zookeepers monitor animal pregnancies or fertility.

Refining the technique — details of which are being kept tightly under wraps until it’s published in a peer-reviewed paper — was “very much trial and error,” says Bolton, ranging from washing the entire bolus to taking tiny external scrapes.

“At the beginning, there was still quite a lot of debris, and now we’re getting far less in our samples,” she adds.

There are other non-invasive ways of collecting samples, such as hair traps, which use pheromones to attract wild animals and glue to collect hair samples. Researchers have previously used this method to study mammal populations, although Bolton says hair samples may provide fewer cells that are more vulnerable to environmental conditions, while feces offers a reliable and plentiful source of cells.

“The unique protocols we have developed are straightforward and cost-effective, and therefore can easily be rolled out en masse,” she adds.