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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 20 2018, @03:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the because-they-can dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Scientists explain how wombats drop cubed poop

Wombats, the chubby and beloved, short-legged marsupials native to Australia, are central to a biological mystery in the animal kingdom: How do they produce cube-shaped poop? Patricia Yang, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, set out to investigate.

Yang studies the hydrodynamics of fluids, including blood, processed food and urine, in the bodies of animals. She was curious how the differences in wombats' digestive processes and soft tissue structures might explain their oddly shaped scat.

During the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics 71st Annual Meeting, which will take place Nov. 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia, Yang and her co-authors, Scott Carver, David Hu and undergraduate student Miles Chan, will explain their findings from dissecting the alimentary systems, or digestive tracts, of wombats.

"The first thing that drove me to this is that I have never seen anything this weird in biology. That was a mystery," said Yang. "I didn't even believe it was true at the beginning. I Googled it and saw a lot about cube-shaped wombat poop, but I was skeptical."

[...] So, why do wombats poop cubes? Wombats pile their feces to mark their home ranges and communicate with one another through scent. They pile their feces in prominent places (e.g., next to burrows, or on logs, rocks and small raises) because they have poor eye sight. The higher and more prominently placed the pile of feces, the more visually distinctive it is to attract other wombats to smell and engage in communication. Therefore, it is important that their droppings do not roll away, and cube-shaped poop solves this problem.

Yang hopes that the group's research on wombats will contribute to current understandings of soft tissue transportation, or how the gut moves. She also emphasized that the group's research involved mechanical engineering and biology, and their findings are valuable to both fields. "We can learn from wombats and hopefully apply this novel method to our manufacturing process," Yang said. "We can understand how to move this stuff in a very efficient way."


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Tuesday November 20 2018, @03:57PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 20 2018, @03:57PM (#764262) Journal

    Cubes? It sounds like a new toy to replace lego bricks.

    Maybe these wombats could be trained to defecate in orderly rows upon rows, like stacking bricks, to form structures, such as restaurants.

    Wombats defecating reminds me: Microsoft please, PLEASE wait until Windows is stable enough to release, before releasing it.

    --
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:42PM (#764284)

    Build the Wall! Build the Wall!

  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:44PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday November 20 2018, @04:44PM (#764286)

    If you click through to the article, the term "cube" is being used very generously. "Not entirely round" would be more accurate. "Just not-round enough to avoid rolling away"

    --
    "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by deimtee on Tuesday November 20 2018, @11:56PM (1 child)

      by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday November 20 2018, @11:56PM (#764467) Journal

      I've seen wombat shit. It's close enough to a cube with rounded corners that Apple would sue them for it.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @03:50AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 21 2018, @03:50AM (#764567)

        So Apple is going to sue the shit out of them?