Posted on 11/21/2018 2:49:28 PM PST by ETL
Wombats, short-legged, burrowing marsupials native to Australia, are the only animals known to produce cube-shaped feces.
It’s long been speculated that wombats produce these poop bricks as a unique way of marking their territory.
Now, scientists have determined the likely causes of these unusual feces are the shape and flexibility of the wombats’ intestines, National Geographic reports.
Researchers inflated long balloons in the intestines of dead common wombats to measure the shape and flexibility and found two ravinelike grooves where the intestines were more elastic.
These grooves could form the poop into a solid cube just before it exits the wombat, the scientists reported over the weekend at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics in Atlanta.
Next, the researchers say they’ll investigate how only two intestinal grooves can extrude a cube, as opposed to four—one for each face except the top and bottom.
Literally crapping bricks....
If they put little indentations on them, could use them for Lego blocks.
God just has a great sense of humor. :)
This study is of no practical use.
What we need, neigh demand, to know is...
Will climate change make their fecal matter round, making them all die?
It’s been rumored they use them like concrete blocks to shore up their burrows.
I guess that is what you use to build a sh!t brickhouse. Who knew.
squirrels, OK they are cute. This story? Not so much.
Ignoble prize here we come.
“What did you do for your grant?”
“I made virtual wombat sausage using air and plastic.”
____________________________________________________________________
71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics
5:10 PM–6:28 PM, Sunday, November 18, 2018
Georgia World Congress Center Room: B306
Chair: David Saintillan, University of California, San Diego
5:10 PM–5:23 PM
Abstract 
Patricia J Yang 
(Georgia Inst of Tech)
Patricia J Yang
(Georgia Inst of Tech)
Miles Chan
(Georgia Inst of Tech)
Scott Carver
(University of Tasmania, Australia)
David L Hu
(Georgia Inst of Tech)
I saw this article and I just knew that it would be you that would be posting it.
I hope I never start putting out cubes, I have enough prob....OK, TMI.
Almost Panda Bear cute.
Nature does have a sense of humor too. Too bad Wombat’s don’t have good vision. Otherwise they too would have round pellet style poop.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/wombat-poop-cube-why-is-it-square-shaped/
“Wombats make cube-shaped poop, thanks to unique intestines”
Good to know.
Thank you for deep belly laugh Charles! :)
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