What is "call of nature"

Usage examples of "call of nature".

Whatever call of nature he had had to answer, he should have been done long since.

Parry stepped outside to attend to a call of nature, then returned to lie down in a vacant comer.

Robert Philippe, an art teacher and cabinetmaker, was walking in the park with his parents one June day in the 1930s, when he found himself obliged by a sudden call of nature to go behind a tree.

I might have read the newspaper in the holy of holies, and when I needed to get up to answer a call of nature, I could have left the newspaper spread open on the coffee table instead of folding it neatly just as it came from the paperboy and when I came back there it would be, wide open, just as I left it, without a tapping foot and a scowl and a rosary of complaints about people who are unfit to live with civilized persons.

But gestures and their limited vocabulary had carried them through the incident earlier when Tremaine had had to explain that he needed to turn his back while she and Florian answered the call of nature.

Parry stepped outside to attend to a call of nature, then returned to lie down in a vacant corner.

She realized from the woman's thought that this meant he had a call of nature and needed help to rise.