Erythrina tryptamines??

[Torsten]

What makes your shit stink?? It's skatol. This is produced by the decomposition of tryptophan and tryptamine. It is the characteristic smell of tryptamine pyrolysis and also part of the smell when you burn milk or eggs.

Erythrina indica is a weed in this area and we have been pulling them out with a 23ton excavator and basically ripping the crap out of them. No problem with the top of the tree, but the root STINKS !! The bloody thing was pulled out 2 days ago some 40m from the house and it is still stinking out the house.

I recognised the smell to be that of skatol. For there to be skatol present I would presume that tryptophan or tryptamine would be present too as plants don't make skatol for the fun of it.

I don't have any time to research this right now, but I thought I'd post it just in case anyone else has more ideas about this, and to keep a record of it in the archives.

[thatpersonthatiam]

haha. skat..ol

[Gwydion]

Doesn't that translate as "Fosters lager"?

[theobromos]

Some Erythrinas have large quantities of the toxic N,N,N-trimethyl derivative of tryptophan - hypaphorine. I believe it has been suggested that distillation might produce methylmethanoate and DMT but destructive distillation is likely to produce a lot of nasty crap (a technical chemical term) including the possibility of skatole.

Erythrina indica is the Parijata (Fairy Tree or Wishing Tree?) of India, sacred to Indra, a God closely associated with Soma.

[Happy Cadaver]

I was reading in an environmental chemistry book that the breakdown of steroids in the body gives shit its characteristic smell. not being a good chemist, does this include tryptophan, etc??

so this plant could contain some nasty steroids i spose???

[Torsten]

na, skatol is definitely the main thing that makes shit stink, except when you eat onions in which case there are sulphur compounds involved (but they are usually 'vented').

Once you have smelled skatol once you will recognise it everywhere and anywhere

[Guest reville]

And just for the record, its the breakdown products of blood that give poo its colour

[Guest auto302823]

It has to be said, you lot know your shit

[Torsten]

Originally posted by reville:

And just for the record, its the breakdown products of blood that give poo its colour

You're kidding right?? You mean our own blood, or the blood we eat??

If it is our own, then that is a hell of a lot of blood/iron we lose every day....

[Gwydion]

I remember hearing several years ago that there are about 4 parts per billion (or was it million? I think bilion) of gold in our shit. Apparently this is a higher occurence than in many commercial operations.

[Auxin]

I have been told many times that the color of 'poo' is from the bile acids, most notably glycocholic acid and taurocholic acid. One time I erroniously used hot water to make a bile salts solution (of refined technical grade bile salts) and the (fairly concentrated) solution turned more black/brown than normal and smelled strongly like 'poo' minus the scatole and indole. The bile acids are not "decomposition products" at all, they are steroids produced by the body to serve a important role, and that is the transport of fats, non-polar vitamins, and such out of the food bits and into the wall of the intestine where they are carried away and used.

Heres some more crappy trivia:

Cholic acis is the main product of the hydrolysis of bile (commercially obtained from 'poo') and they use this as a food emulsifying agent (upto 0.1% in the USA). It is no wonder that school food always tasted so shitty!

[Happy Cadaver]

Any idea why species of Archidendron, which are native to subtropical rainforests on the east coast, have sap which smells like onions and cat piss?? i was repotting some a few weeks ago and the disturbed roots smelt pretty strongly. any idea what the substances would be??

[Gwydion]

darcy, do you put onions in your compost? And do you have cats?

[Torsten]

Onion smell is due to sulphur compounds (allyl-sulphides??).

Not sure about cat piss, but I presume its the same as the flavour in pawpaw

[Happy Cadaver]

ha ha ha, what a desire of catman.

Edited March 13, 2007 by darcy

[Gwydion]

And white cask wine.

[Darklight]

Well darcy as the discoverer of this new compound, do you get naming rights? Catamine? Catamite? Any more ideas?

[Auxin]

I agree with Torsten, the 'onion' smell is probably due to some simple unsaturated organic sulfides and/or disulfides- like allyl sulfide for instance. The cat piss smell is probably ammonia, either that or some low molecular weight amines- like methylamine for example. Both ammonia and methylamine occur in many plants.

[theobromos]

Bilirubin is one of the colouring compounds in poo from the decomposition of the bile acids.

[Erliquin]

Torsten, could that be the reason for why there's jekem? (aside desperate poverty)

http://www.aegis.com/news/ap/1999/AP990703.html

"The teen-agers, two feet away, are stone drunk from guzzling buckets of 100-proof, homemade beer called kachasu, and sniffing jekem -- fermented human feces scraped from sewer pipes."

I know one thing, I'll pass on the experiment.

[Happy Cadaver]

Pissamine.

[Guest reville]

Thanks theobromos

What i was referring to is that when your body breaks down Haemoglobin. Your blood is always being turned over. it can deal with the protein but the leftover stuff goes through a several processes, i believe it is quite toxic (?) becoming along the way different coloured pigments

perfect example - a corker of a bruise

It goes red then blue then through all shades from browns,yellows and greens

with names like bilirubin, biliverdin etc

Anyway in the end the stuff diverges

one lot goes and gts mixed with your crap and oxidises as it moves down the large intestine moving through the palate of colours we are all familiar with.

This is why the colour can be so variable

Different rates of movement and hence oxidation and different levels of blood pigments.

The other part of the process ends up in the bladder as whatever Urobilinogen becomes (geez im rusty) to give pee its yellow colour

The variation in colour there also being affect by rates of flow and breakdown.

If for instance the system is overwhelmed as in acute bouts of malaria or other haemolytic events your pee may turn black

'Blackwater fever', in which case its probably too late for you and youd better be scarmbling for that blotter acid youve been keeping for the occasion..

[waterdragon]

i always wondered why my shit didn't stink, i must be unable to produce skatol. nice to finally have a scientific basis for my theory.

[Torsten]

Originally posted by Erliquin:

Torsten, could that be the reason for why there's jekem?

No, I don't think this is the reason. I also don't believe some of the stuff written here. While it is a shocking story and probably quite close to the truth, there are a few factual errors where the writer obviously tries to embellish the truth. Such as, there is no such thing as 100 proof beer. Any fermented liquid stops at maximum 14%, ie 28 proof.

Cornmeal is described as lacking nutrition, which is just plain wrong as it is one of the few (almost) complete foods (together with a small amount of meat as described in the story, it would be a complete food).

It is a story designed to shock. And while many people will be shocked enough by the HIV tragedy in these african countries, for others the writer chooses to use further extremes to make the point.

[Andrew]

I read another"version" of this story,

almost word for word except they were smoking the jekem.The next thing we know they will be shooting it up.