These chilled-out, laid-back animals mainly eat grass.
And they poop.
"So we're not so different after all."
But does all that scat serve any useful purpose?
Let's find out.
Capybaras are the largest rodents in the world.
As gross as that sounds, it's good for them.
Because grass is a tough plant to digest,
a lot of its nutrients
pass out of their bodies instead of being absorbed
by the digestive system.
That's why capybaras must eat their food twice,
or in other words,
eat their poop.
They aren't the only animals who do that though.
Here are four other creatures who eat their excretions.
Which animal's poop helps the environment?
And which poop can be seen from space?
Let's find out.
At number four we have the most
dangerous bird in the world.
Cassowaries are enormous birds
from Australia and Papua New Guinea.
They attack at blinding speed and have enough force to
tear open a human and take out our organs.
But that's not the only crazy thing about them.
These wild birds have fairly short digestive tracts
that push out nutrient-rich scat,
such as half-digested fruit.
They eat their own poop and each others'.
Talk about taking camaraderie to another level.
The cassowaries' feces help the rainforests.
As they walk hundreds of meters (yards),
their poop spreads partially digested seeds,
helping the rainforests to stay green and fertile.
Next up are the penguins,
who put their manure to the most interesting use.
When they want to breed, they poop on the ice to melt it.
That creates perfect,
although smelly conditions for rearing their chicks.
Here's a fun fact.
Penguin colonies create so much poop
that satellites can see the dark brown waste.
Researchers use the images to monitor
penguin populations in the Antarctic.
The runners-up for our "most useful poop" award
are the dung beetles.
It's right there in the name.
The horned dung beetle is one of the strongest
insects on the planet.
It can pull over 1,100 times its body weight.
That's equal to a man lifting two 18-wheeler trucks.
Wow.
That's some amazing strength from something so tiny.
Surprisingly, dung beetles are picky eaters.
While they're snacking on a pile of dung,
the beetles only eat the tiny particles
that contain nitrogen.
These minibeasts climb on top of their dung piles
to cool off on hot summer days,
and the males may save the prize poop
for females they want to win over.
What a fantastic Valentine's Day gift that would make.
This big guy claims the top spot.
Unlike our other contestants, hippos do not eat their poop.
But their feces are useful in other ways.
Hippo dung has positive and negative
impacts on the environment.
One beast can release up to 36 kg (79 lb) of poop
into the water each day.
Their poop is full of silicon,
an essential element that feeds diatoms,
a tiny microalgal species.
They change about 20% of the Earth's carbon dioxide
into oxygen
and form the base of the food chain,
feeding animals like crabs and snails.
Although silica is a foundation for life in rivers and lakes,
hippo poop has some deadly ingredients as well.
This massive creature's excrement is full of ammonia,
methane and hydrogen sulfide
and completely lacks oxygen.
Bacteria consume the gases in the water
as they digest the hippo poop.
Because hippos produce so much dung, it sometimes
chokes the rivers and kills all the fish nearby.
Want to learn more about how hippos hurt the environment?
Check out our episode about why hippos have the
deadliest poops in the world.
Helping the environment with their poop and snacking on it.
these animals' poop contributes more than meets the eye.
And that's what makes them Crazy Creatures.