Fair warning, your view of wombats is about to change forever. Read on at your own risk...
For most of us, when we think of wombats (which let's be honest, we don't really do very often) we might think of how cute these short, stubby-legged little creatures are or how cool their name is.
But what we really should be thinking about these Australian marsupials is "why the hell is their poop shaped like a cube?!!"
Yes, you read that correctly, wombats are the only animals in the world that produce cube-shaped poop.
You may be surprised to learn that until recently there was very little research into this pongy puzzle. People had all sorts of theories, the most popular being that wombats make cubes so that they can stack them to mark their territory or stop them rolling away.
But none of this explained how on Earth they manage to squeeze one out in a square shape in the first place. They don't have a square anus and the cubes don't form in or around their stomachs.
It turns out that the giveaway was the guts: a scienctist called Patricia Yang found out that the answer to this mystery was in the way wombat intestines stretch. As food is digested it moves through the gut; pressure from the intestine helps sculpt the scat, affect its shape.
After begging around for months, Yang managed to get ahold of two roadkill wombats and some pigs innards for comparison (if you've managed to get this far in your life without encountering pig poo, it's your run-of-the-mill round shape). She expanded both wombat intestines and some pig intestines with a balloon to measure and compare their elasticities (or stretchiness).
For most of us, when we think of wombats (which let's be honest, we don't really do very often) we might think of how cute these short, stubby-legged little creatures are or how cool their name is.
But what we really should be thinking about these Australian marsupials is "why the hell is their poop shaped like a cube?!!"
Yes, you read that correctly, wombats are the only animals in the world that produce cube-shaped poop.
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| Wild wombat droppings in their natural habitat |
You may be surprised to learn that until recently there was very little research into this pongy puzzle. People had all sorts of theories, the most popular being that wombats make cubes so that they can stack them to mark their territory or stop them rolling away.
But none of this explained how on Earth they manage to squeeze one out in a square shape in the first place. They don't have a square anus and the cubes don't form in or around their stomachs.
It turns out that the giveaway was the guts: a scienctist called Patricia Yang found out that the answer to this mystery was in the way wombat intestines stretch. As food is digested it moves through the gut; pressure from the intestine helps sculpt the scat, affect its shape.
After begging around for months, Yang managed to get ahold of two roadkill wombats and some pigs innards for comparison (if you've managed to get this far in your life without encountering pig poo, it's your run-of-the-mill round shape). She expanded both wombat intestines and some pig intestines with a balloon to measure and compare their elasticities (or stretchiness).
What Yang found is that pig intestines have a relatively uniform elasticity, while wombat's have a
much more irregular shape, which she believes explains why they push out such puzzling poop!
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| And here's a cute wombat. Thanks, Mark Gleeson! |
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