Scatology

In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.

Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases such as tapeworms. The word derives from the Greek σκώρ (genitive σκατός) meaning "feces".

A comprehensive study of scatology was documented by John Gregory Bourke under the title Scatalogic Rites of All Nations (1891). An abbreviated version of the work (with a foreword by Sigmund Freud), was published as The Portable Scatalog in 1994.

Psychology

In psychology, a scatology is an obsession with excretion or excrement, or the study of such obsessions. (See also coprophilia.)

Sexual fetish

In sexual fetishism, scatology (usually abbreviated scat) refers to coprophilia, when a person is sexually aroused by fecal matter, whether in the use of feces in various sexual acts, watching someone defecating, or simply seeing the feces. Entire subcultures in sexuality are devoted to this fetish.