When we think about Australia, a handful of animals come to mind, many of them marsupials. So given my propensity for writing about Straya’s finest, it was no surprise when approximately all of you sent me The Oatmeal cartoon about the wombat yesterday. So.
Today’s Moment of Science… the cube pooper.
(They also fart super goddamn loud.)
Native only to Australia, there are three species of wombats. Common wombats are found scattered throughout southeast Australia and Tasmania. The other two species are the northern hairy-nosed wombat and the southern hairy-nosed wombat, cousins found mainly in Queensland and New South Wales. They’re closely related to koalas, all from the sub-order of ‘Vombatiformes,’ meaning ‘wombat shaped things,’ which is my band name.
Speaking of shapes, let’s get into the business.
The cube poop.
One of the animal kingdom’s longest running mysteries comes from the ass of a wombat, their cubic poop. The only animal to grace us with this issue, it’s raised a lot of questions. Ever think you’ve taken a rough shit? Yours don’t have corners.
It’s been researched and debated for years, but scientists think they have an answer, and it points to the wombat being- or more to the point, having- a unique asshole. Earlier this year, a study from the University of Tasmania suggested it was caused by a combination of how the fecal matter is dried and the unique muscular contractions in the very last stretch of the colon. There are two rigid and two soft sides around the intestine which are suspected to contribute to the shape.
A lot of answers come down to ‘it’s an evolutionary advantage,’ and wombats use feces to communicate and mark their territory. Flat cubes are better at staying put than round ones, and so perhaps the wombats best able to communicate via scat placement were the ones that survived. Or maybe nobody else in the animal kingdom wanted to fuck with the guy who shits bricks.
Behind that sweet innocent face are some sharp teeth that grow continuously for the wombat’s entire life. This is an interesting case of convergent evolution; other marsupials don’t have teeth that do this, but the wombat developed this trait common to beavers and rodents. They need it for hours on end of mowing the grass. This three foot long, 60lb giant tribble spends up to eight hours a day roving its face over the fields of Australia like a grass-seeking bio-roomba.
They’re famously good diggers, clawing out large underground burrows to live and hide out in. Though the wombat is a sturdy critter, Australia provides quite a few natural predators, and its ability to burrow is one of several tactics keeping it safe. During the Australian wildfires in 2020, wombat burrows also provided a refuge for many other animals in their habitat.
They may be friendly to humans, but they can get a touch territorial. They’ll fucking fight to protect their burrow, but it’s goddamn adorable to see two tiny upholstered land manatees sumo wrestling.
They live about fifteen years in the wild and typically a few years longer in captivity. The world’s oldest wombat in captivity was Patrick the Wombat at Ballarat Wildlife Park in Victoria. He was taken in as an orphan, and when his caretakers attempted to release him back into the wild, a bunch of territorial bully wombats kicked Patrick right back to the park. So there he lived out his days peacefully for thirty-one long years, enjoying snuggles, rides in wheelbarrows, and making himself an adorable little town mascot.
The Oatmeal ended on a ‘save the wombats’ note, warning that there are only eighty northern hairy-nosed wombats left. Part of the difficulty in bringing the population back is they only have one baby at a time and it takes a year from pouch to weaning time. At one point the population was down to just thirty breeding females. Fortunately, their numbers have grown impressively in the last few decades, reaching over 300 earlier this year. They’re still critically endangered, so if you’re in Queensland and stumble across a pile of cubic poop? Listen for the sound of rambunctious wombat flatulence and move along.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, wondering how many other wombat shaped things I can find in this world.
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Rather tame, really. Back when military MRE’s were new, there were problems with getting fiber balanced.
End result being shitting out Rubik’s cubes.
Only impressive if you swallowed them fucked and shat them out solved.
No picture of the poop?