Scooting its butt across the carpet is not a behavior unique to your dog, nor is it a new behavior at all. Creatures have been scraping their bottoms across the ground since at least prehistoric times, and paleontologists dug up the evidence to prove it.
The rock hyrax was a furry, tailless little critter that roamed South Africa’s Cape south coast hundreds of thousands of years ago. The evidence we’ve gathered suggests that they enjoyed lounging on boulders to soak in the sun, much like modern-day seals and walruses.
Evidently, they also like to drag their butts through the sand. We know this because an impression of one such 126,000-year-old rock hyrax butt drag was found by researchers from the African Center for Coastal Palaeoscience, along with some of its fossilized poop nearby. That really paints a complete picture of what this little guy was up to before his actions were immortalized.
Believe it or not, according to researchers Charles Helm and Lynne Quick of Nelson Mandela University, who wrote about their research in The Conversation, this discovery is paleontological gold as it represents the only known hyrax trace fossils on Earth.
Newly Discovered Fossil Shows First-Known Animal Butt-Drag
The impressions were analyzed using optically stimulated luminescence, a process by which scientists can determine the last time something, in this case sand, was exposed to light. It’s not just fossilized poop and butt drag marks that are telling us more about the hyrax. It’s their pee, too!
The hyrax was a communal creature. When they established a home, they stayed there for the long haul. That meant they were often absolutely saturating their living areas with their pee and poop.
After a while, this would lead to the formation of hyraceum, a tar-like substance made from fossilized pee and poop. It’s been used in traditional medicine to treat epilepsy and fertility problems.
Yes, it’s all very scatological, but this immaturity is helping scientists better understand the hyrax and its ancient ecosystem and climates. That’s all noble and good. But we must not let the light of scientific discovery cause us to lose sight of the fact that the most essential part of all of this is that it’s hilarious and stupid.
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