Image copyright PA Image caption Twenty different types of excrement have been placed in resin spheres 
 
 A museum dedicated to excrement, with examples from the animal and human world, has opened to the public. 
 
 The exhibition at the Isle of Wight Zoo features faeces 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. 
 
 "Poo is all around us and inside us, but we ignore it," said co-curator Daniel Roberts. 
 
 Twenty illuminated resin spheres show off the different types of faeces with facts hidden behind toilet lids on the museum walls. 
 
 Image copyright PA Image caption Organisers prepared the faeces using a specially-built drying machine 
 
 Samples of faeces have been gathered from around the world as well as donations received from the Isle of Wight Zoo and Dinosaur Isle museum. 
 
 The display also includes fossilised poo (coprolites) dating back 140 million years as well as a tawny owl pellet containing bones and teeth. 
 
 It also covers issues such as dog mess and the lack of access to sanitation in developing countries. 
 
 Nigel George, one of the exhibition's curators, said the subject "provokes strong reactions". 
 
 "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," he said. 
 
 Image copyright PA Image caption The exhibition is set to go on a tour of the UK 
 
 "But for most of us, under the layers of disgust and taboo, we're still fascinated by it." 
 
 Organisers prepared the faeces using a specially-built drying machine - stick insect droppings were desiccated completely in about an hour, while lions' samples took a fortnight to dry out. 
 
 The attraction is on show at the Sandown zoo through the spring and summer before going on tour. ||||| Like us on Facebook 
 
 England will soon have a museum devoted entirely to everyone’s favorite topic: poop. A zoo on the Isle of Wight (located in the English Channel) is opening a new institution around the smelly, hilarious, and scientific world of excrement from both humans and animals, Hello Giggles reports. 
 
 The Isle of Wight Zoo will open the National Poo Museum on March 25, according to the Isle of Wight County Press. The exhibits will feature poopy specimens from lions, foxes, babies, and more, including fossilized feces from 38 million years ago. And yes, there will be freeze-dried poop hanging from the ceiling, because what kind of poop museum wouldn’t have that kind of decor? 
 
 While we all love a good poop joke, feces are worthy of serious study. Poop can be a dangerous substance: Thousands of children die every year from diarrheal diseases due to a lack of toilets, which forces people to poop out in the open, contaminating water supplies with sewage. Yet it’s also a potential resource. Some experts think feces could be a huge source of energy for the world. Healthy poop can help restore the balance of microbes in the gut, and might one day even be an obesity treatment. Whether we like it or not, poop is everywhere. 
 
 Just a few months ago, the world’s largest fossilized poop collection opened in Florida, and Japan just got its own toilet museum. All in all, it’s a great time to be an amateur poop-ologist. 
 
 [h/t Hello Giggles] ||||| One man’s incredible collection of fossilised poop 
 
 George Frandsen has been collecting ancient poop for many years. Now, he wants to share these exceptional excrements with the world in the first-ever online museum of fossilised poop: the Poozeum. 
 
 
 
 A coprolite from the Jurassic Period that was found in the United Kingdom. © George Frandsen/Poozeum 
 
 Coprolites are the fossilised remains of faeces, and they can come from any ancient species, from termites to turtles to tyrannosaurs. Frandsen first encountered one in a fossil shop in Utah during his freshman year of college. Amazed and immediately hooked, he bought the specimen – the first of a collection that continues to grow to this day. 
 
 What's so great about old poop? Coprolites are pretty rare as fossils go, and they can be valuable sources of information for scientists. Many of the specimens in Frandsen's collection include bits of bones and scales, the undigested remains of an animal's prehistoric dinner. Finding food in fossilised faeces is one of the only ways palaeontologists can show definitively what a particular prehistoric animal ate. Want to know what was on the menu for a hungry dinosaur? Check the poop! 
 
 Despite their value, Frandsen found that coprolites got little attention in natural history museums or internet resources. So a few years ago, he decided to use his collection as the basis for an online museum. "[I want it to be] a free, one-stop, media-filled coprolite resource site," he says. 
 
 Leptomeryx. © George Frandsen/Poozeum This specimen was found in northwest Nebraska and one coprolite even shows the complete toe bone from a small deer in the genus 
 
 In 2015, Guinness World Records, with the help of professional palaeontologists, certified Frandsen's collection as the largest private coprolite collection in the world, containing over 1,200 samples at the time. According to Frandsen, thousands more have been added since then. 
 
 The Poozeum holds some pretty incredible specimens, including the largest coprolite in the world – affectionately known as "Precious", it's 20 centimetres long and weighs almost two kilograms. Precious was probably left behind by a similarly supersized pooper, perhaps a large crocodilian. 
 
 Another standout specimen in Frandsen's collection (this one, unfortunately, doesn't have a name) bears the marks of large teeth, a sign of "aborted coprophagy": at one point in time, a big, hungry animal had snapped up the poo, chewed on it and spat it back out (wouldn’t you?). 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum 
 
 This is “Precious”, the famous coprolite. The specimen would be over 254mm or 10” inches long if it wasn’t bent. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum This coprolite shows evidence of aborted-coprophagy. Of all the coprolites known from the fossil record, this is the only specimen recognized as preserving both the top and bottom sets of vertebrate bite mark impressions. 
 
 Frandsen's coprolites make public appearances, too. Recently on display at the South Florida Museum, the exhibit proved so popular it was extended from just a few months to an entire year. 
 
 Why are people so intrigued by fossilised poop? For Frandsen, the answer is quite simple. "It's something we can all relate to," he says. What's more, seeing the poop ancient animals left behind provides us with a connection to them, especially everyone's favourite prehistoric fascination, the dinosaurs. But it's also a subject we don't normally spend time on, and that makes it "fresh, exciting and maybe even a little taboo," he adds. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum A coprolite found in South Dakota. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum This specimen dates back to the Miocene Epoch and shows signs of Invertebrate burrows throughout. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum A coprolite found in Germany. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum A coprolite from Wyoming that dates back at least 50 million years. 
 
 © George Frandsen/Poozeum This large fossilised faeces specimen is named "The Kraken". 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Frandsen's collection is the largest coprolite collection in the world. In fact, it is the largest private coprolite collection in the world.
– There is a museum for just about anything these days, and now, thanks to some pioneering folks in the UK, even those with poop fixations can get their fix thanks to the grand opening of the National Poo Museum at the Isle of Wight Zoo. The samples of feces range from scant insect excrement to gigantic elk and lion poo, as well as the doodoo of a human baby, reports the BBC. The museum even includes fossilized feces dating back some 38 million years, reports Mental Floss, and also covers the more metaphorically gross side of dung, such as the diseases spread without toilets or proper sanitation. In an innovative display that required a custom built drying contraption, the crap curators have placed the fetid samples in illuminated resin spheres that include related facts hidden behind toilet lids. And while it's billed as the first-ever museum devoted to poop, Huffington Post has tracked down two similarly themed endeavors, including a poop museum that opened in Italy last year and the one and only Mr. Toilet House in South Korea, which features statues of an assortment of mammals doing number two. Curator Nigel George, meanwhile, tells the BBC that "small children naturally delight" in the topic while "for most of us, under the layers of disgust and taboo, we're still fascinated by it." (What does a unicorn have to do with poop, anyway?)