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ATLANTA, GA – Scientists have been wondering for some time how wombats make poop cubes?
A team of scientists, led by Patricia Yang, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said to have revealed one of the most interesting mysteries of the animal world: why the Wombat poop has the shape of a cube. Yang and his team presented their findings on digestive processes behind the mystery of the Wombat poo at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physical Society in Atlanta.
"Wombats are fossilized herbivorous Australian marsupials with the particularity of producing cubic feces, which is unique in the animal kingdom," according to study authors. m said in the summary of the study. Because it is a rarity in nature, the production of poo was ripe for research, and it is there that the Georgian team has interfered with the heart of the matter.
"In the built world, cubic structures are created by extrusion or injection molding, but there are few examples of this feat in nature.We study how the wombats produce cubic feces, examining the structure and the mechanics of two dissected wombats food systems – from people euthanized by veterinarians after motor vehicle collisions in Tasmania, Australia, "researchers wrote.
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In the remaining 8% of the intestine, the stool went from a liquid state to a solid state composed of cubes 2 cm apart, scientists discovered. This change in shape is due to the elastic properties of the intestinal wall, which vary azimuthally, said the researchers.
"By emptying the intestine and swelling it with a long balloon, we found that the local strain ranged from 20% at the corners of the cube to 75% at the edges." therefore, preferentially to the walls to facilitate the formation of the cube.This study addresses the long-standing mystery of the formation of the cubic dispersion and gives an insight into the new techniques of non-axisymmetric structures using soft tissue, "said the authors. the summary of the study.
Poo comes in several sizes, from microscopic poo to the smallest invertebrate to poop, the largest elephant in Africa that can each produce more than 50 kg per day, according to IFLSCIENCE! It also comes in many forms, such as tubes (dogs), pellets (rabbits) or splats (cows), but the wombat is unique in the animal kingdom in that it produces cubic poop, and a lot of them – about 80 to 100 cubes a night.
To solve this puzzle, the Georgia team examined the wombats digestive tract that needed to be euthanized after vehicle collisions in Tasmania, Australia.
Image via Shutterstock
Video via YouTube
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