Dr. Ted Stankowich

Nervous poops might be a way to lighten your body load in preparation for a fast runaway, a fast escape.

That's the one thing I can think of.

It might help you.

I don't know of any mammals that release a defensive compound in their poop that would in any way hinder an attack, but it would sort of lighten your load to help you escape a predator attack.

A number of things can shoot bodily fluids out of their body.

And it's a somewhat common way of defending yourself.

If it happened while being squeezed or being attacked or being pressed on and something squeezed out and shot the predator and it deterred it, that animal survived.

So guess what?

That animal's genes get to live on and be spread, and that trait gets to be spread.

So if it's something that happened fortuitously...

An animal is more likely to have stuff shoot out of its body when pressed on or squeezed.

That gets to spread and more copies of it are found in the next generation.

So that's how that thing happens.

So the slow lorises will take the secretions of the gland from their elbow and spread it on their fur to make themselves toxic, distasteful, poisonous, or their bite can be very painful because it's in their mouth.

However, shrews, selenodons, they all have poison glands in their mouth that they use to subdue prey.

Really?

And they actually have grooves in their front teeth that they can inject the poison into prey.

And the prey will become immobilized.

They can catch that prey and store it for longer periods of time.

So they're definitely not the only poisonous mammals.