Today I learned that a) the shit of wombats has like a cube, and b) scientists have figured out how to shit like that.
These are both excellent things!
Maybe you were already aware of the geometry of wombat feces? Damn hipsters. It was a surprise to me anyway. And apparently the exact mechanism by which it assumes that form has also been a mystery to scientists for a long time.
But if Science reports …
To get to the end of the mystery, scientists analyzed a wombat that died after being hit by a car. They examined the intestines and found that it contains two grooves where the intestines are more elastic, which the team first reported in 2018.
In the new study, the researchers analyzed two further uteruses and tested the layers of the intestines of muscle and tissue and found regions with different thickness and stiffness. They then created a mathematical 2D model to simulate how the regions expand and contract with the rhythms of digestion. The bowel sections contract over a few days and squeeze the shit while the bowels draw nutrients and water from the stool, the team reported today in the appropriate magazine Soft Matter.
The stiffer sections are “like a stiff elastic -[they’re] will contract faster than the soft regions, “said David Hu, a biomechanics researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology and author of the study. mammals, the undulating peristalsis of the intestinal muscles is consistent in all directions, but in the uterus the grooved tissue and the irregular contractions form over many cycles of solid, flattened blocks.
The full study is here, though affordable; that fine, fine photo of the wombat poop above comes from the paper.