New Scoop on Poop

Last weekend the STP and I went on the NPS ranger led-off trail-best last hike of the summer.  

The ranger was full of interesting tidbits about the area we were hiking through.  He stopped to talk.  A lot.  At one point he was talking about the wild horses and mentioned some stud piles we had hiked past.  Any questions?  So one brave soul voiced the thought that had fleetingly passed through my brain, but had not lingered long enough to fully form into a question. 

How do you know it is a stud pile, um, you know, as opposed to a 'mare pile'? 

During my time in the microbiology lab, I have examined more poop than the average person, and I can't tell by looking, or smelling, or any other manner for that matter, the difference between male and female stool samples.  So how could the ranger tell?  His explanation was that the male horses use stud piles to 'mark their territory' and that the females' poop would be more spread around instead of in a pile in one place.   I'm not sure about wild horses, but I think that the reason has less to do with marking territory and more to do with just male/female issues.  Boy horses focus on one task at a time.  Girl horses are multitasking and don't have time to stand in one place long enough to make a pile. 

Just my theory. 

Just putting it out there.