Odd question about plecos

[Innivus]

Why is their poo so long and stringy?

[plecocicho]

Most plecos are omnivors or herbivors. All plant eating animals have long guts, so to keep their food so long in the gut, to get hardly digestable plant carbon hydrates to easily digestable sugars. As only a small part of plant matter is fully digestible, large part of it is changed into poo. So long guts mean long poo. Some herbivors even eat poo, as they can assiamlete some more nutrients from it.

[Innivus]

Thanks for the explanation of the long stomach... makes sense. I'm not trying to be gross, but I'm just curious; why does the poo string out for so long? I've seen 7-8" strands from a 3" fish.

[SeaDragon]

Thanks for the explanation of the long stomach... makes sense. I'm not trying to be gross, but I'm just curious; why does the poo string out for so long? I've seen 7-8" strands from a 3" fish.

Just like with humans, their intestines are looped around many times. For example the average human male is 5.9ft with a small intestine of 20ft and a large intestine of 5ft. So if you put that into fish perspective a strand of poop being almost triple their body length makes sense. The reason for such a long system is for better extraction of nutrients, even then the animal may not digest the matter well.

[plecocicho]

Ratio between tl and gut lenght in some plecos is 1:20-25