How wombats poop cubes

The flexibility of wombats’ intestinal tracts helps to form their distinct poops

WOMBAT SCAT Wombats are stout marsupials, native to Australia. They utilize their cubelike droppings to mark their area.

Of all the poops on the planet, just wombats ‘are shaped like cubes.

The varied flexibility of the wombat’s intestines assists the marsupials to sculpt their scat into cubelike nuggets, instead of the round pellets, untidy piles or tubular coils made by other mammals, researchers reported November 18 at the American Physical Society Department of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Atlanta.

Wombats mark their territories with small stacks of scat. Cuboid poops stack much better than rounder ones, and do not roll away as easily.

Cubic shapes in nature are really uncommon, says mechanical engineer David Hu of Georgia Institute of Innovation in Atlanta. Making and keeping flat facets and sharp corners takes energy. It’s unexpected that the wombat’s intestinal tracts– which look much like those of any other mammal– would develop that shape.

When an Australian associate sent out Hu and his colleague Patricia Yang the intestinal tracts from two roadkill wombats collecting frost in his freezer, “we opened those intestinal tracts up like it was Christmas,” Hu states.

The intestinal tracts were loaded with poop, Yang says. In people, a poop-filled little intestine extends out slightly. In wombats, the intestinal tract stretches to 2 to three times its regular width to accommodate all of the feces.

Yang used skinny balloons– the type that gets sculpted into animals at carnivals– to pump up the intestines and determine their stretchiness in different locations. Some regions were more stretchy; some were stiffer. The stiffer areas most likely help develop the unique edges on the wombat poops as the waste moves through the gut, Yang proposes.

Sculpting the poop into cuboid nuggets seems a completing touch for the wombat gastrointestinal system. Over a common 30-meter-long wombat intestinal tract, the poops handle distinct edges only in the last meter or so, Hu states. Approximately that point, the waste is gradually solidifying as it moves through the gut.

The ended up turds are specifically dry and fibrous, which may assist them keep their signature shape when they’re ejected, Yang recommends. They can be stacked or rolled like dice, standing on any of their faces. (She knows. She attempted it.)

In the wild, wombats deposit their droppings on top of rocks or logs as territory markers, often forming little stacks. They appear to prefer to poop in elevated spots, Hu states, but they’re likewise restricted by their stubby legs.

To validate that the elasticity variation truly does form the cubes, Yang and Hu are now attempting to design the wombat gastrointestinal tract using pantyhose.

Source

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-wombats-poop-cubes

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