Wombats poop, and now science knows why – BGR

The shape of animal poop is not what normally makes the headlines of science, but when it comes to wombats, things are a bit different. Wombats are famous poop because their feces have a very strange shape. Now the researchers finally have an explanation.

Wombat pies are not very popular in the animal kingdom. They do not poop logs or tiny spheres. They poop cubes, and a lot of them. But why? This was sought by a team of scientists led by Patricia Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In a new series of research presented at the 71st annual meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics of the American Society of Physics, scientists explain how cube-shaped poo is really beneficial to animals.

While studying wild wombats, the team discovered that creatures tended to poop in very easy-to-find places. They do not hide their droppings but rather deposit them on raised places, as at the top of rocks. It turns out that this is a behavior that marks the territories and that the animals have developed over generations, a bit like a dog that marks its territory with a fast stream of urine.

The cubic form of shit is actually a big advantage for animals because it prevents turkeys from rolling after being laid. Spherical swirls would scatter and bind, but the cubes pile up where they should, and that's what the wombats are looking for.

By examining the animals' intestines, the team discovered that the remaining 8% of the intestines are responsible for forming the cube-shaped stool. They attribute this formation to the "variable elastic properties of the intestinal wall," which is an elegant way of saying that the animal's intestines have evolved to create this particular type of poo.