Alien toilets

What would toilets made for alien species be like? Feel free to pick species from fiction or your imagination, and tailor the toilet to that species or multiple ones (like the sort on multi-species space stations).

Possible topics: what would the toilet design be? The hand/appendage cleansing device? The graffiti? Super-clean or abhorrent? Safe for humans? Level of technological advancement? How would it work into their culture?

Please be work safe and not too disgusting :)

I'll give the boring "it depends" answer. Any toilet design would depend on what the anatomy of the aliens using it is like. If they're just "like humans, but green" I'd expect some variation on the "hole in the ground" design. If they just secrete waste like sweat or something they may not even have them, instead simply having self-cleaning stations. It varies.

Same goes for graffiti. If they're like... dog aliens, I'd expect just marking territory all over the walls to be the equivalent of their graffiti.

Same goes for cleanup. If their toilets are automatic and they don't have to touch part of their body considered "dirty", they won't need to wash hands, for instance.

How would toilets look like if the aliens excrete from the sides of their heads?

Assuming the aliens looked relatively human, like one of those salon hair sinks?

Maybe something like urinals, but wider and placed higher.

I like to imagine their diapers being worn in a similar fashion to those feed bags you see in cartoons.

Considering the Clarke's Third Law tech the Forerunners utilize, those suits of theirs probably dump any waste in the nearest star before it even leaves the body.

The new Glasslands novel also reveals how Spartans go to the bathroom in their suits: the armor catheterizes them. Man, that's probably uncomfortable.

edited 30th Oct '11 6:03:42 PM by OrKuunArQenByundis

Who says they would use toilets?

Just cause they're aliens doesn't mean to say they don't have to visit the little boys' room.

Only they probably do something weird and alien-esque, like it comes out of the top of their heads or something.

You gotta take a dump once in a while, even if you're an alien.

I'm sure there would be waste matter, but there's the question of whether they'd want it out of the way like we do or just go wherever, and maybe clean the floor once a week. Maybe it's dry and without anything dangerous living in it.

edited 30th Oct '11 7:46:36 PM by ManInGray

Could always just constantly sweat it out and shower more often.

Ithink the kroot in warhammer did just that.

Speaking of tabletop games, do D&D beholders poop? I mean they have got a big mouth and lots if teeth but no 'exit' I know of.

Well, I think people are assuming a biology reasonably similar ours. Which isn't that out there; here on Earth all the organisms more complex than single celled animals poop. Even bugs. (I think.) I think that poop would be unsanitary even from an alien.

The Japanese use holes in the ground that you have to squat over.

Perhaps some aliens could be like rabbits... and it's necessary for them to eat portions of their own poop...

edited 30th Oct '11 8:04:21 PM by Swish

I guess it helps that rabbits are also incapable of vomiting.

Though couldn't a sufficiently advanced alien race simply produce food that had only necessary nutrients without the waste? Though I guess you'd still come across those oddballs who choose to eat real food...

I remember one short story in which the aliens skin excretions were all completely gaseous in nature - so they farted constantly instead of sweating. Also, this was their form of communication. The story involved the one human in a classroom of these things, the human being the first interstellar exchange student from Earth. He had to talk to the aliens by making fart noises using his hand and armpit.

If you have been eating your own poop from millions of years and see nothing wrong with it,I doubt you would stop if given the chance.

Those who didn't ' recycle food' would likely be orchestrated as pretentious weirdos like people treat vegans today.

I wonder what they would say about eating other people's waste?

This thread is going weird fast. 

edited 30th Oct '11 8:37:38 PM by joeyjojo

Check out the Babylon 5 episode Divided Loyalties. They feature human toilets alongside alien ones.