Wombat Poops: The Mystery Behind Wombat’s Cube-Shaped Droppings

The bare-nosed wombat is the only animal known to pass waste in the form of cubes. The significance of the cube-shaped wombat poop for the health of wildlife was finally discovered by scientists.

This Australian marsupial's ability to squeeze out nearly 100 six-sided turds per day has long baffled scientists. Now, scientists claim to have discovered how the wombat intestine produces this unique excretion.

Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University, said that it demonstrates how unique these animals' guts are. Jung was not involved in the research, but his focus is on the mechanics of animal motion.

The bare-nosed wombat (Vombatus Ursinus), which can weigh up to 35 kilograms, is an animal that inhabits Australia's grassy plains and eucalyptus forests. It spends its days in tunnels and its nights grazing on plants. It is a territorial animal that leaves distinctive droppings as a sign of its presence.

Solving the Cubed-Poop Mystery

A dissected wombat, which was killed in a vehicle collision, helped the scientists solve the mystery. There were two grooves in the guts that are more elastic. These were found in the intestines after they were examined, which the team first confirmed in a report published in the journal Bulletin of the American Physical Society in 2018.

The layers of muscle and tissue in the guts of two additional wombats were examined by the researchers for the new study, and they discovered areas of varying thickness and stiffness. Then, to simulate how the regions change size in response to the rhythms of digestion, they developed a 2D mathematical model. The team reports their findings today in the aptly named journal Soft Matter of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Over several days, the intestinal sections contract, squeezing the poop as the gut draws water and nutrients out of the feces.

Shaping Wombat Poop

David Hu, a biomechanics researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that the stiffer areas will contract more quickly than the softer areas, like a stiff rubber band. Hu is one of the authors of the study. He added that the team discovered that softer intestinal regions slowly squeeze and shape the cube's final corners. The wavelike peristalsis of the wombat's intestinal muscles is constant in all directions in other mammals. However, the wombat's grooved tissue and irregular contractions over a long period of time result in the formation of firm, flat-sided cubes.

Hu hypothesizes that the flat-sided feces are less likely to roll off from these high perches because the wombats climb up on logs and rocks to mark their territory.

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What Cubic Wombat Poop Means

Hu acknowledges that the way plastic is made won't change as a result of this new knowledge when asked about the significance of the discovery. However, he claims that the wombat's tactic could aid engineers in creating more effective ways to shape priceless or delicate materials.

Meanwhile, according to Hu, this information may be useful to scientists rearing wombats in captivity. Their feces occasionally are not as cubic as the wild wombats. According to him, the wombat is healthier the more square their poop is, Science reports.