I’ll bet you were upset/outraged by the title of this blog! He’s finally lost it. But don’t forget I am a veterinarian and we vets deal with the basics of life. My question is: how did we get to be so paranoid about these normal, natural human animal activities and desperately avoid being seen to evacuate the contents of our bladders and colons? We watch all the other species of animals deposit their faeces and urine on the ground without embarrassment and, in the case of domesticated species and household pets we frequently examine the outcomes carefully in case they might reveal illness or injury.

But it is not just human excrement or urine that needs to be shunned, we also carefully avoid showing where they come from. We are obsessed about not revealing our ‘private parts’! Interestingly, there is an hierarchy of privacy: It is least serious for women to show their breasts in public (go in summer to a public beach in Sydney), and men are keen to reveal their chests. Anuses seem to need more coverage and genitals cannot be shown in public without risk of a fine. Although, surprisingly, men are not too worried at having to urinate in front of other men.

Has it always been this way? Did our distant ancestors cringe and look the other way if someone deliberately did the equivalent for us of removing a towel while changing from swimming togs into street clothes? I sense that any clothing covering the ‘private areas’ of humans thousands of years ago was more for preventing injury or sunburn. So who or what has been responsible for making us more precious and coy than our fellow animals? And what are the implications of this unusual behaviour for society?

Earlier civilisations were less prudish – there are side by side public toilets and public baths (I bet they didn’t wear costumes) in the excavations of the ruins of Pompeii for example. And nude male and female statues in the distant past were anatomically correct. So what changed? In my opinion there are at least a few possible causes. Firstly clothing. The need for full sets of clothes in the northern hemisphere prevents exposure of private parts and imagination took over from reality. Nudity was a rarity and the possibility of any exposure became a titivation (what an interesting word!). Another likely cause was religion and the drive of the church to control all aspects of human sexuality. And of course the modern knowledge that human effluents can spread disease means we are now careful where we deposit and dispose of our poo and wee. But, of course, we make exceptions for young children with respect to both genital exposure and the management of their waste products. They have yet to learn what the custom is.