Study shows why wombats poop cubes
A set of scientists in Australia studied a group of wombats that'd been run over by cars. The study, done exclusively on the digestive tracks of wombats "that has been euthanized following motor vehicle collisions" aimed to discover the truth behind a mysterious natural secret that'd plagued the minds of many for time uncounted. They wanted to know how and/or why wombat poop comes out in cubes.
If you, as a human, wanted to make a cube out of any material, you'd need to form it with your hands. Particularly adept users of feet could attempt to make a cube, and you might be able to make a cube out of gum using your tongue and/or teeth, but still – you'd need to use your brain. Wombats make cubes with their guts.
NO: I will not publish a photo of wombat poop on SlashGear dot com. If you want to see wombat poop, I'm sure you'll be able to figure out how to find said images on your own.
A study was conducted by Patricia J Yang, Miles Chan, and David L Hu of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Scott Carver from the University of Tasmania, Australia. According to their results, a wombat does indeed (verifiably) poop cubes. Their research also pointed to the way in which the cubes are pooped.
How do wombats poop cubes?
"In the final 8 percent of the intestine, feces changed from a liquid-like state into a solid state composed of separated cubes of length 2 cm," says the abstract of the research by Yang et al.. "This shape change was due to the azimuthally varying elastic properties of the intestinal wall."
FUN FACT: Wombats are the only known species "capable of producing cubes organically."
But HOW? HOW did they discover such a thing? It's simple! They just pulled out a wombat's intestines and filled them up with a balloon. It's so obvious!
"By emptying the intestine and inflating it with a long balloon, we found that the local strain varies from 20 percent at the cube's corners to 75 percent at its edges," said the study. "Thus, the intestine stretches preferentially at the walls to facilitate cube formation."
TO LEARN MORE: A presentation will be made at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics at 5:10 PM–5:23 PM, November 18, 2018. This presentation will go by the name "Abstract: E19.00001 : How do wombats make cubed poo?" and it's contents will, indeed, contain pictures of poo.
This presentation will be part of a larger session called "Session E19: Biological fluid dynamics: General I" and will be held by the four researchers listed above and run by Patricia J Yang. The conference runs Sunday–Tuesday, November 18–20, 2018 and takes place at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia.