Quick Answer: Defecation follows digestion and is the necessary biological process by which organisms eliminate a solid, semisolid, or liquid waste material known as feces from the digestive tract via the anus or cloaca. The act has a variety of names, ranging from the technical, to the common, to the obscene, to the euphemistic, to the juvenile. The topic, usually avoided in polite company, forms the basis of scatological humor. Humans expel feces with a frequency varying from a few times daily to a few times weekly. Waves of muscular contraction in the walls of the colon move fecal matter through the digestive tract towards the rectum. Flatus may also be expulsed. Undigested food may also be expelled within the feces, in a process called egestion. When birds defecate, they also expel urine and urates in the same mass, whereas other animals may also simultaneously urinate during defecation, but the processes are spatially separated. Defecation may also accompany childbirth and death.