Why is wombat poop cube

The team compared the wombat intestines to pig intestines by inserting a balloon into the animals' digestive tracts to see how it stretched to fit the balloon.

This, the scientists explain, resulted in 2cm 0. The marsupial then stacks the cubes - the higher the better so as to communicate with and attract other wombats. Now we have this third method," Dr Yang said. History of mystery monkey revealed. What makes 'serial poopers' poo in public? Why a faecal transplant could save your life. The scientists involved in the research tested the layer of muscle and tissues in the gut and found regions with different thickness and stiffness.

The researchers studied the rhythms of digestion with the help of a two dimensional mathematical model. As per a report in the Science Mag , researchers found that the intestinal sections contract over many days. These sections pull nutrients and water out of the poop as they squeeze it. As per the finding of the team, softer intestinal regions squeeze the feces and mold it into the cubic shape.

The stiffer regions contract more readily than the softer ones. The common wombat Vombatus ursinus , also known as the coarse-haired or bare-nosed wombat, poops cube-shaped feces.

Bare-nosed wombats, or common wombats, can be found in the woodlands of hilly landscapes in south and southeastern Australia and in Tasmania. The furry marsupials are renowned for producing distinctive, cuboid poop, which researchers believe they then disperse tactically in order to communicate with one another.

Now, scientists at the University of Tasmania have discovered more about the curious phenomenon. Instead, Swinbourne says the cubic shape is more likely related to the dry environments that most wombats live in. And sometimes, in zoos, where the animals have readier access to hydration, Swinbourne says their scat is less cubic.

Being dry helps the scats form more rigid shapes with sharper angles. It took Yang and her colleagues months just to get ahold of wombat innards for their study.

No zoos in North America had any, so Yang had the intestines of two roadkill wombats shipped from Australia. But neither of those hypotheses turned out to be the case. As food is digested it moves through the gut, and pressure from the intestine helps sculpt the feces — meaning that the shape of the intestine will affect the shape of a dropping.

So Yang and the team expanded both wombat and pig intestines with a balloon to measure and compare their elasticities or stretchiness. The wombat intestines, however, had a much more irregular shape. Yang observed two distinct ravine-like grooves, where the intestine is stretchier, which she believes helps shape wombat feces into cubic scat.

Yang agrees that there are still a host of questions to answer and says her research is ongoing. Her next task is to figure out why only two grooves produce a cube, as opposed to needing four. But even the initial findings imply broader implications for sectors such as manufacturing.