Scientists find out why wombats produce cuboid poops

It is a biological curiosity that has perplexed scientists. Now researchers believe they have solved one of the animal kingdom’s smelliest mysteries: how wombats produce cuboid

 poo. The marsupials’ six-sided portions of dung are unique in nature. And they produce them prolifically, depositing between 80 and 100 cubes each night.

Wombats’ defecation allows them to pile  their faeces high to mark their territory and communicate through scent. The pellets’ flat sides mean they can be placed without rolling away, making them likely to catch the eye of a mate.

But scientists have always been uncertain how wombats – which have circular anuses – fashion their faeces into their unusual shape. Now, a team of US mechanical engineers

 and Australian biologists believe they have flushed away any doubt.

Lead study author Patricia Yang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, set out to investigative if differences in wombats’ soft tissue structures might explain their dung.

Researchers studied wombats’ digestive tracts and found that near the end of the intestine faeces changed from liquid states to solid states made up of small, separated cubes. They concluded that varying elastic properties of wombats’ intestinal walls allowed for cube formation. In nature, wombats are the only known species capable of producing cubes organically.

Yang said her findings could have implications for manufacturing, as well as contributing to scientific understanding of soft tissue transportation.