Poor Odo...he's my favorite because he's such a mystery. He mentioned his attempts to eat and drink were "messy" without elaborating, which makes me draw a few conclusions as to what happened. A) He wasn't sure what to do past the chewing stage, so the food went everywhere. (Imagine a small child eating) B) He did swallow it, and it just went right through him in the most literal sense. My Star Trek encyclopedia book I've had for years says he only has "an approximation of an esophagus." No stomach means the material has nowhere to go but down! (Oh boy, do the 'clothes' catch it or does it end up in a pile where he was sitting?) C) He managed to chew and swallow, and it floated around inside for awhile until it was expelled when he reverted to his liquid state. (Poor Doctor Mora...imagine having to clean that up!) What do YOU think happened? Be as silly as you like if you want to
Apocalypse Rising addresses this after he becomes humanoid. He has a whole conversation with Sisko about how he doesn't get as much enjoyment out of his job, but he loves to eat. So Odo, not as a changeling, has experienced food the way you and I do.
I know...but I mean before that. He mentioned that his first attempts to eat and drink when he first took humanoid form was "messy", and until he was stuck as a solid he couldn't taste or smell. (But he got the sense of those when Curzon borrowed his body in Facets--gotta wonder if he somehow formed the proper organs to digest food and drink during that time!)
Since he told Lwaxana Troi that he doesn't have internal organs, I assumed that either the food was coughed back up or left behind when he changed forms. Either would be a mess.
Eeew, that sounds uncomfortable! I never thought about the coughing it back up part. Yow. Talk about traumatic.
How traumatic would it be, though? For Odo, who is only approximating a mouth anyway, how would "coughing" the food up be any worse, psychologically, for him than passing it out a faux-anus? The whole process is an approximation for him anyway. It does make one wonder how familiar Odo was with the details of the "waste extraction" process when he first tried to eat....
^ That was covered when he was a human - the changeling version of Bashir told him he needed to relax and eat prunes in an episode teaser for 'The Begotten'.
Yes, I was wondering more about pre-Humanized Odo. He made an attempt to eat like a humanoid when he was a younger changeling. I wonder how much he knew about the process before attempting it, particularly whether he knew anything about the toilet habits of humanoids. It's not exactly polite conversation.
^Perhaps he didn't have either. I don't think he even knew much about genitalia until his time as a humanoid where he actually HAD them and read those PADDs about mating practices. Can you imagine poor Odo sitting there going "Doctor Bashir, what is this extra appendage doing on my body?" (Now THAT would be an embarrassing conversation for the poor guy!) And I say this because when he's a changeling again, he has that affair with Arissa and asks if she "could tell" if it was his first time, and was pleased when she said no.
And I'm sure Quark annoyed him with interesting holodeck programs. ...but I wonder how weird it felt when Odo made that facsimile of a drink and "drank himself." Swallowing yourself must be a really odd sensation. >>;