Wombat poop: scientists have finally discovered why it is cut into cubes

A team of scientists claims to have elucidated one of the strangest mysteries of the animal kingdom: why the poop of wombat has the shape of a cube.

The wombat, native to Australia, produces about 80 to 100 cubes of poo each night. According to Australian Geographic, it is known to use excrement to mark its territory, depositing piles of material outside burrows and over rocks and logs.

But the way the wombat produces cubic forms is a phenomenon that has intrigued many fur marsupial observers.

Researchers, led by Patricia Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, said they discovered the digestive processes behind the mystery and presented their findings at the 71st Annual Meeting of the Fluid Dynamics Division of the American Physics Society in Atlanta.

The cubic feces of the wombat are a unique feature in the animal world, researchers explained, because cubes are usually created by cutting or molding.

"In the built world, cubic structures are created by extrusion or injection molding, but there are few examples of this feat in nature," said the project's authors in the study's abstract. .

To solve the puzzle, the team examined the digestive tract of wombats that needed to be euthanized as a result of vehicle collisions in Tasmania, Australia.

The wombat takes about two weeks to digest food and researchers have discovered that when feces enter the remaining 8% of the intestine, they pass from a liquid state to a solid. At this stage, the droppings are in the form of separate cubes approximately two centimeters long.

By inflating the intestine with a long balloon, the researchers found that the walls of the wombats intestine stretched unevenly, which allowed the formation of the shape of the cubes.

"The local stress varies from 20% at cube angles to 75% at its edges," the team said. "Thus, the bowel preferably extends on the walls to facilitate the formation of cubes."

The authors of the study said the findings could have implications beyond the natural world, helping to better understand new manufacturing techniques.