Finally, after years of being stored in the trunk of phenomena without logical explanation, we now know why scientists discovered why wombats poop square. Without a doubt, one of the strangest biological phenomena.
First things first, what is a wombat?
To give you some context, a wombat (Vombatus Ursinus) is an Australian marsupial similar to a bear or rodent. During the night they build burrows in mountainous and forested areas in southeastern Australia and Tasmania. One of their most characteristic features is their slow metabolism: they take two weeks to digest the grasses they eat, and they poop in the shape of a cube, unlike any other species in the world.
Wombats and their poop
A team of scientists investigated this curious phenomenon to discover the processes involved in the digestion of wombats. These Australian marsupials make four to eight cubes of poop, two centimeters square each.
In addition to being square, during a single night, wombats can defecate about a hundred cubes that they collect and place around their domain. The distribution of the small cubes has two objectives: on the one hand, to use them to mark the territory and, on the other hand, to attract potential mates (how romantic!).
With these geometrical dimensions, the excrement cubes are easy to stack and thus prevent them from being moved to an undesired location.
Story originally published in Spanish in Cultura Colectiva News
