Defecation
expulsion of feces from the rectum
Defecation (or defaecation) follows digestion and is the necessary biological process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces (or faeces) from the digestive tract via the anus or cloaca. The act has a variety of names, ranging from the technical (e.g. bowel movement), to the common (like pooping or crapping), to the obscene (shitting), to the euphemistic ("doing number two", "dropping a deuce" or "taking a dump"), to the juvenile ("going poo-poo" or "making doo-doo"). The topic, usually avoided in polite company, forms the basis of scatological humor.
Humans expel feces with a frequency varying from a few times daily to a few times weekly. Waves of muscular contraction (known as peristalsis) in the walls of the colon move fecal matter through the digestive tract towards the rectum. Flatus may also be expulsed. Undigested food may also be expelled within the feces, in a process called egestion. When birds defecate, they also expel urine and urates in the same mass, whereas other animals may also simultaneously urinate during defecation, but the processes are spatially separated. Defecation may also accompany childbirth and death.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Defecation” as expulsion of feces from the rectum. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as expulsion of feces from the rectum. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q204015. The Library of Congress control number is sh85036416. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Defecation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.