I suppose thinking about random shit is a normal thing to do… but giving serious consideration to actual shit is a new one. Venturing into calculating the size of the shit that Clifford the Big Red Dog would take… well, that is one I did not see coming.
But alas, here we are all, together, and the super serious mathematician James Hind — from Nottingham Trent University — helped MEL author Brian VanHooker (no chance that is a real name) calculate the exact size, and weight.
The first thing VanHooker did was provide Hind with Clifford’s height — he is exactly 10 feet tall in the film, so that helps with the math — and then he waited…
…. for the most perfect answer:
“The average height of a male labrador is 22 inches, and for Clifford to be 10 feet tall, that makes him nearly five and a half times — 5.455, to be exact — as large as an average labrador,” Hind explained. “Healthy labrador poop is log shaped, which is mathematically easy to calculate. The formula for the volume of a cylinder is r2h (where h is the length of the log, and r is the radius). For a dog with a healthy diet, we would expect a normal-sized labrador to produce three portions of inch-wide poop that is four inches long each day. In volume, that would be equal to a cube that’s about 2.1 inches on each side.
“For Clifford, the pile of poop has to be multiplied by 5.455 in terms of its height, width and length. That’s roughly equivalent to a cube that’s 11.52 inches on each side. Accounting for the margin of error, that’s one cubic foot of dog poop.”
So… one cubic foot. Of shit.
Okay. But…. how much does it weigh?
Pet Poo Skiddoo’s dog-waste calculator (if you didn’t know that was a thing… now you do), that equals out to just over 6.5 pounds of shit, per day.
There you have it: Clifford shit is one cubic foot and weighs about 6.5 pounds.
Which, I gotta say… is probably more interesting than this movie is going to be.
