Re: What animals produce guano?

The word "guano" originally meant the excrement of sea birds.  The origin of the word is apparently from the ancient language 
of the Incas, the ruling class of which became the Quechua tribe of Peru. Their term for the dung or excrement of seabirds,
"huanu", was adopted as the word "guano" by the Spanish speaking people of Peru around the year 1600. 
(Random House Webster's college dictionary, 1997).  The guano was very useful as fertilizer, and was exported by Peru to 
other parts of the world.

Later, guano began to refer to the excrement of bats, seals, and sea lions. The expanded use of the term apparently came
from people along the Peru coast and in New Zealand.   Perhaps the common theme was that the excrement of sea birds, bats, 
seals, and sea lions were all useful for fertilizer - this was excrement that actually had some economic value! Words having to 
do with excrement generally tend to become either expletives or vulgar terms, or else become an acceptable term that can 
be used in polite discussions such as business discussions. The latter apparently became the case with "guano", and the 
spreading of this acceptable term to other economically viable excrement sources is understandable given the scarcity of 
acceptable terms for excrement.

One of the four  nucleotides found in DNA and RNA was first discovered in sea bird guano, in 1846, and isolated in 1891.  
When you see a sequence of nucleotides representing the genetic code (like the name of the movie, GATTACA, that came 
from a sequence of nucleotides in a genetic code) -- the G stands for GUANINE... which was originally found in Guano.

Encarta Article on Guano

My Word Doctor: Guano by any other name...