This quite unassuming animal that acts like a furry lawnmower is able to do something that no one else in the world can. It poops cubes. And now we know why and how.
The wombat is an Australian marsupial with strong short legs and a face like a koala. Well, sort of. It is the world's largest borrowing mammal with the most developed brain of all marsupials.
But what makes the wombat really unique is what it leaves behind: cubes. Pushing out eight cornered poop sounds move uncomfortable, much easier. Squeeze out a cylinder like some other mammals do.
So how can a square come out of a round hole? And wombats do have a round anus. Here's a CT scan to prove it.
This is not as square. The mystery of the cubed poop is an inside story. The first clue was found while conducting an autopsy on the victim of a road accident.
Right near the end of this Wombats nearly two meter long intestine. , a very strange phenomenon was discovered. Poop cubes had formed.
The thing is, the wombat intestine is tube shaped just like ours. Tube shaped intestines mould tube-shaped faeces. Something weird is happening in the wombat intestine that is invisible to the naked eye.
Time to bring out the microscope. You can see thicker and thinner muscle around the circumference of the intestine where the cubes are formed. Well, an expert came.
Here's how it looks in a graphic. The the current thinner muscles form bands along the intestine. And it turns out the thin bands are four times stretchier and the thick bands.
This has never been seen before in any animal. Genius! Now for some math to calculate intestine contractions and all clear, right?
Well. . .
you can also explain it with a rubber band: “We can just kind of pinch the sides of the rubber band and kind of simulate those more stiff regions of the intestine. And if you just hold it like this, you can just go like that and it begins to form a cube. So when the contractions happen, it is basically squeezing the faeces into the shape And as the moisture is absorbed out of the faeces it starts to fragment along its length and form the distinctive actual cubes that come out at the end.
” The international team of scientists who worked this out won the coveted Ig Nobel Prize, for Science that makes you laugh. “They produce cube shaped skat. ” and then think.
“Wombats are scientific proof that you can squeeze a square peg into a round hole. ” “Thank you. ” But why use precious energy to manufacture bricks?
Is there some sort of an evolutionary advantage? Time to hang out with wombats in the wild. To find out if pooping cubes helps them to survive.
And wombats do need some help. They are mostly solitary animals, except were mating, are raising young, and they have very poor eyesight. Imagine trying to find a mate if everyone looks like a furry brick.
But wombats do have an excellent sense of smell. All the better to sniff out other wombat poop. And that's not hard because wombats do their business in latrines.
It would be hard for a sensitive nose to resist this aroma. Over a few weeks, thousands of cubes can accumulate in a latrine, because they stack really well and stick together. Now, that's one good reason to turn waste into cubes.
But why use a communal toilet when there's so much space to do your business in? Some solitary animal species use latrines to deposit and receive messages like a sort of feces book page. But there's no proof that wombats are using their latrines to communicate.
One way to find out: “That's a lot of shit. ” Post a message, collect fresh poo from a wombat latrine and place it at another. The latrines must be a great distance apart - so the poop is from a complete stranger.
If a resident wombat sniffs the foreign poop pile and reacts by leaving its own poop, then it may be proof of communication. “Here comes a wombat sniffing the new pile. Oh, my god, and then it's taking a poo.
” What could they be saying? “Hi. I'm a female ready to mate.
Hang around” or “This is my territory, so go find another place to do your shit. ” Sometimes there's just nothing to say. More experiments are needed to prove conclusively that wombats use their latrines for communication.
But it does look like wombats are not pooping cubes just to keep scientists busy. Cubes may truly help the world go round. And that's goo shit.
What a story. We do have mor of them, so please check out the playlist for more ‘Wild to Know’ videos.
