You Can Finally Visit A 'Poo Museum' Dedicated To... Poo

A UK museum dedicated to poo, with real-life examples from the animal and human world, has opened to the public.

The exhibition at the Isle of Wight Zoo is the first in the UK to have a focus of faeces and features excrement from animals such as elks and lions as well as a human baby.

The National Poo Museum has been created by members of the artist collective Eccleston George.

The group has created 20 illuminated resin spheres to show off the different types of poo with interesting facts hidden behind retro toilet lids which line the museum walls.

The display also includes fossilised poo (coprolites) dating back 140 million years as well as a tawny owl pellet containing bones and teeth.

'Poo provokes strong reactions,' Nigel George, one of the exhibition's curators, said.

'Small children naturally delight in it but later we learn to avoid this yucky, disease-carrying stuff, and that even talking about poo is bad.

'But for most of us, under the layers of disgust and taboo, we're still fascinated by it.'

“The National Poo Museum’s mission is to lift the lid on the secret world of poo - to examine our relationship with it and to change forever the way we think about this amazing substance.

“The National Poo Museum also intends to rub people’s noses in important poo-related issues, from dog mess to the effects of diet on the microbiome, to lack of access to sanitation in developing countries.

“To prepare the faeces we had to build a special poo-drying machine. A stick insect poo can be desiccated completely in an hour or so, but a lion poo can take a fortnight to dry out.”

The attraction will be held at the Sandown zoo through the spring and summer before going on tour.

- Sky News Australia