Call me old fashioned, but the only floaters I want to see in my toilet bowl are the ones that I make myself. No one wants to look into their lavatory and see the eyes of an animal staring back at them, but sometimes this happens. Unwelcome visitors either fall in or wriggle up the waste pipe.
So, if answering the call of nature becomes an encounter with nature, remember, the animals are just as surprised to see you as you are them. Resist the urge to flush, and if you can’t safely rescue the animal for yourself, close the lid carefully and call someone who can. Here are eight egregious toilet trespassers.
10 animals that like to dwell in toilets
Pythons
In 2016, a man in Thailand got the shock of his life when a snake bit his penis as he was sitting on the loo. The 3 metre-long reticulated python had slithered through the sewers, navigated the drainage pipes, traversed the U-bend and was curled up in the bowl. Attaporn Boonmakchuay told the Bangkok Post, “The snake was yanking very hard. I felt as though my penis had been severed.”
Pythons are a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia and Australia. Ambush predators, they lie in wait until their prey is close, then bite and kill it by constriction. It’s unlikely, however, that the python was trying to kill Boonmakchuay. The snake is more likely to have bitten him because it felt threatened.
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Reticulated pythons are highly adaptable. Although their natural habitat is grassland and forest, as long as there’s food and water, they’re not picky. In urban areas, sewers and drains provide shelter and a ready supply of small animals to eat. Boonmakchuay was hospitalized due to blood loss but later made a full recovery. So did the snake, which was removed by rescue workers and released back into the wild.
Rats
According to the myth, in a big city such as London or New York, you’re never more than a metre away from a rat. Whilst this isn’t true, rats have most definitely infiltrated our sewers, where they thrive on the shelter, warmth and ready supply of food.
In June 2025, a family in Trelogan, north-east Wales, were forced to sleep in the garden after rats began appearing in their toilet. John Evans first noticed the intruders late one night. He told the Manchester Evening News, “I opened the toilet seat at 3am and everything was fine, and then something jumped at my bottom. I jumped off screaming like a little girl.”
Rats are good swimmers and can hold their breath for several minutes. When people flush food waste down their toilets, it can attract rats, which swim up the pipes to find the source. Heavy rain and flooding can also cause the water levels inside the sewers to rise, forcing rats to seek refuge by climbing up drainage pipes into people’s homes.
Funnel-web spiders
In Australia, funnel-web spiders are a source of fear and fascination. With their glassy, hairless bodies, some have fangs so powerful they can penetrate fingernails and soft shoes. Six species produce venom so toxic it can injure and sometimes kill people.
Most bites to humans are caused by males, which wander off in warmer months to find receptive females. They are attracted to water, and so are often found in swimming pools, and sometimes, toilets.
The spiders get stuck in the steep-sided receptacles, where they can survive for a day or more. They can’t swim, but tiny pockets of air in the hairs around their abdomen provide buoyancy…. until they become waterlogged and eventually drown.
It’s rare for funnel-web spiders to be found in toilets but it does happen. Two years ago, one Reddit user posted a picture of a mite-ridden male that had ‘ambushed’ them in the bathroom.
Spotted black snakes
It’s one thing to be ambushed on the toilet by a non-venomous snake, but quite another to be surprised by a venomous one. In January 2024, snake catcher Tennille Bankes was called to a public toilet in Goondiwindi, Queensland, after a local reported a snake in the dunny. When Bankes arrived, the lid was shut, but a scaly black tail was poking out. It belonged to a spotted black snake, an extremely venomous species, native to eastern Australia.
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Spotted black snakes grow up to 1.5 metres long. Their preferred natural habitat is grassland, shrubland and savanna, where they feast on frogs, lizards and small mammals. They don’t bite non-prey animals unless they are severely provoked, but if a person does get bitten, they can expect to suffer pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
Fortunately for everyone involved, the story had a happy ending. No one was hurt. Bankes was able to safely capture the snake and relocate it back into the wild.
Fur seals
Okay, so this one wasn’t found in a toilet bowl, but it was found in a public toilet. In July 2016, locals discovered a 120 kilogram fur seal they called ‘Sammy’ sleeping in a public toilet cubicle in a Tasmanian cemetery.
Australian fur seals are common in the waters that surround Tasmania. When they venture inland, they often turn up in paddocks and backyards. Experts think that Sammy swam up a nearby creek before he found his way into the cemetery and decided to take a nap.
Wildlife experts later sedated him as they prepared for his relocation. Wildlife biologist Rachel Alderman told ABC News, “The officers were able to shut the door to the cubicle and keep it contained, which reduced potential issues for the seal and people, so you couldn’t have asked for a better result really.” Then he was transported to a nearby beach and set free.
Green Iguanas
Green iguanas are an invasive species in Florida where they are doing so well, they are considered pests. They undermine pavements (literally), destroy gardens and sometimes, pop up in people’s toilets.
Iguanas are strong climbers and good swimmers. They can enter sewer systems via openings or damaged pipes and move through the drainage networks into people’s homes. In 2023, a man in Hollywood, Florida, heard a splashing sound coming from his lavatory. He told the Orlando Sentinel, “I look down, and I see this frightened-looking reptile looking back at me.”
After trying and failing to remove the medium-sized iguana with a pool net, the man tried to pick it up. The disgruntled reptile turned tail and disappeared back down the waste pipe, only to reappear moments later and jump out of the bowl. It was then shooed out of the house.
Cockroaches
Famed for their resilience and supposed ability to withstand to survive a nuclear apocalpyse, it is, perhaps, no surprise, that cockroaches are one of the most common critters found in our crappers.
Around 30 of the 4,600 or so species of cockroach live in human habitats. As omnivorous scavengers, they are attracted to the organic material found in human waste and will eat human faeces. As a result, cockroaches are commonly found in our sewers, where the damp, dark environment and plentiful organic waste help to sustain them.
Social media posts describe their appearance in and around urban toilets, but these stories rarely hit the headlines. This is probably because cockroaches are easily flushed away, or because pest controllers are called to deal with the problem quietly.
Kangaroos
It’s not every day you find a toilet paper-munching kangaroo in the dunny, but that’s exactly what happened when a man entered a public lavatory in Australian campsite. A YouTube post that he made shows the animal deliberately unrolling the paper and then stuffing it into its mouth.
The kangaroo wasn’t in the toilet, but it may as well have been, because no one else could use it. Nor was its behaviour that surprising. Kangaroos are herbivores. They prefer to eat grasses, leaves and shrubs, but when times are tough, they have been known to eat cardboard, paper and rubbish.
Toilet roll, clearly wasn’t a terrible option, because the same animal was filmed doing the same thing about a month later. Daydream Island, where the encounter occurred, is a popular tourist destination, where the kangaroos have become fairly indifferent to the presence of humans. So, what’s next after a ‘roo in the loo? A hog in the bog?
