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How Animals Stay Clean: Nature’s Cleaning Crew

We all know too well how easily things get dirty. Dust gathers, and stains appear, seemingly out of nowhere. That’s no exception for the Animal Kingdom, either. But for some of these critters, staying clean isn’t just a matter of being comfortable. It’s also a matter of survival.

The question of how animals manage to stay squeaky clean is something that researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology dug into in 2015 — and certainly, there are quite a few inventive evolutionary methods at hand. Cicadas, for example, sport wings with posts so tiny they’re invisible to the naked eye, which puncture and pop incoming bacteria like balloons, while bees, whose hairy bodies have as much surface area as a slice of bread, flick clumped pollen off their hairs like springboards.

Some animals, though, are more known for dirt and grime than others. Here are four animals who may have unfairly nasty reputations that take care to clean themselves up, much like the rest of us.

Rats Have Grooming Routines

Rodents, particularly rats, get a bad rap, especially considering their historical linkage to disease outbreaks like the Black Death. While rats did play a role in spreading the plague, scientists have argued that the poor sanitation and environmental conditions of the era had a much larger hand in the resulting death toll. Since those days, rats have come a long way. They’re even considered common household pets now, thanks to their relatively larger size and chill personalities. One of the most frequently performed activities that rats partake in, according to researchers, is in fact, grooming themselves.

Ants: Some of the Cleanest Insects

You may get grossed out after spotting an ant (or several) crawling over days-old leftovers or spilled sweets, but ants are actually considered some of the cleanest insects out there, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife, for a number of reasons. Grooming and licking fellow ants in the colony, for one, is a social activity for the bugs, and one of the major responsibilities of nurse ants is keeping eggs and larvae clean.

Opossums Clean up the Streets

Some researchers consider opossums to be a misunderstood marsupial, viewed as either lazy or dirty, or both. After all, their diet consists in part of carrion, as opossums scavenge among carcasses as well as hunting other small mammals. Also famously, they play dead, secreting a stinky substance in their comatose state to further ward off predators.

Pigs Have Their Own Cleaning Standards

Last but not least is our friend from the farm, the pig. They might be some of the most well-known “dirty” animals whose reputation for muck precedes them. After all, pigs enjoy wallowing around in mud pools. If we leave our living spaces unattended for too long, we call them “pigsties.”

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