Anal Retentiveness in a tribal nomadic society - why would it be advantageous?
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In my world there is a human nomadic desert tribe. They have a long-standing custom of refraining from defecating on their journeys. They wait until they reach an oasis.
This is important to the structure of my world but I need a reason for them to do this. Can anyone help?
P.S. There is no religious element to this behaviour - it has to be for a practical reason.
Thank you.
Notes
I use the term anal retentive because the tribe have trained themselves to retain fecal matter in their anuses in addition to the rectum as is normal. This allows the storage of a larger volume. In my 'alternate history' (see tag), the phrase was stolen by Freud when he made a reference to this tribe.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/139304. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
Just tweak their physiology so something about doing it on the journey makes things dangerous.
Or it takes too much time.
Or maybe it's because of predators tracking them. Things are safer in the oasis.
Or it's a hygiene issue. They have to wait until they're someplace with more water. This could be more critical for them than for actual humans.
Socially, it can be severe privacy norms.
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