There are lots of amazing things about Australia. The beautiful beaches, incredible landscapes, unique animals….and their poop!
One of those amazing animals is the wombat. a small stubby marsupial native to the country. It just also happens to poop squares making it one of the most unique poops in the animal kingdom.
Why they have this unusual way of going number 2 has been quite a mystery..until now.
Thankfully science is here to save our brains from wondering about this and has done extensive research to give us the answer and it’s not what you might first think. It would be reasonable to assume that perhaps the wombat has a square, well, butt hole. Incorrect!
Researches at the University of Tasmania discovered that the little cubes are actually formed and dried in the wombat’s colon before they are excreted.
“A cross-section of the wombat’s intestine is like a rubber band with two ends kept slightly taut and the center section drooping. The rigid and elastic parts contract at different speeds, which creates the cube shape and corners.”
So we know how…but why? Like many animals wombats use their ‘business’ to mark their territory. Wombats like to place their poop on high points around their habitat, like rock piles, to allow the scent to waft as far as possible. The square shape means won’t roll off these carefully though of places.
There you go…now you can sleep tonight with that question answered.
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