I spent about 6 years in Thailand when I was young from 11 to 16 yoa. We are wonderfully active actually Boy Scout Troop, and I spent a lot of time out on this Farm about halfway from Bangkok to Pataya Beach. The area was very rural back then not like you see photographs of today back then it was tapioca Farms value Beach was a dirt road with a couple of Shacks on it nice Beach but it wasn’t skyscrapers and hookers and everything else he got going on these days it was idyllic and beautiful time to be in Thailand.
The caretakers of this little farm were a young Thai family, a couple of toddlers. This farm had fish that crawled out of the water to feed and the caretakers would net small popcorn fish and eat that with rice and greens.
But what I really remember about that place is the bathroom. There was this rickety bamboo Pier that went out about 25-30 ft into this small body of water and at the end of the pier was a box with a toilet seat on it... the first time I used it was early one morning, I walked out to the box on the end of the pier dropped my drawers took a crap and then the Water started violently roiling underneath the pier! I freaked out! I looked down there and it took me a second or two and I realized the catfish were feeding.
So that became a thing I looked forward to on subsequent visits... going out to the end of the pier and feeding the catfish it was early morning entertainment for a young lad in Southeast Asia.
One animals waste is another’s protein source. Monogastric fecal matter is mostly single cell bacterial mass upwards of 60% of its mass and 60+% of bacterial mass is proteins,aminos and RNA. Humans and other monogastrics are really metaorganisms we have more bacterial and protozoa DNA by mass in our bodies than human DNA. We are symbiotes with our bacterial gut and skin colonies without them we die. Some people on long term antibiotic treatments die from their bacterial colonies being wiped out. The lifesaving treatment is to take fecal matter from a healthy usually family member and ingest it by the person who’s under treatment. It’s in capsules form thankfully not shake form. The capsules survive the stomach acid and deliver the payload of lifesaving bacterial colony to the new host.
Cattle fecal matter is very high in protein if grass fed can be 70% bacterial protein mass it’s little wonder hogs and chickens gobble it up the chickens wait for fly larvae to form then eat everything in sight.
Some Japanese boffin went so far as to make a “burger” paddie from human bacterial protein mass... Just to prove it could be done. Even with the most stringent autoclave sterilization process nope...NOPE
In Vietnam it common to see the human outhouse also above a pond with Mekong River catfish which also can breath air and “walk” flop short distances on land crazy fish. When I see basa being sold in the USA I’m like no thanks that’s poop fish. Same for tilapia don’t ever eat tilapia especially from China or Asia.