And the answer behind it isn't as simple as "square-shaped butthole." googletag.pubads().setTargeting("category_science","true"); As with literally everything in the world – except religion – it’s thanks to science.                     ] The northern hairy-nosed wombat featured on an Australian 1974 20-cent stamp and also an Australian 1981 five-cent stamp. googletag.defineSlot('/66393171/1x1', [1, 1], '11_DFP').addService(googletag.pubads()).setTargeting('contentId', 593145 || '');         }             }); Baby wombats live up to their cuddly reputation, but once a wombat has grown up it becomes a solitary animal that just wants to be …             }]         adUnits = [{         var pbjs = pbjs || {}; iasScriptUrl = '//pixel.adsafeprotected.com/jload?anId=930425&campId=%%WIDTH%%x%%HEIGHT%%&pubId=%eadv!&chanId=%epid!&placementId=%eaid!&pubCreative=%ecid!&pubOrder=%ebuy!&cb=%%CACHEBUSTER%%&adsafe_par&impId=%%PATTERN:id%%'; The Ground Finch uses its crushing beak to remove ticks from the backs of tortoises and iguanas.                 } Basically: the Rubik’s-esque scat is formed in wombats’ intestines via muscle contractions and not at … hiddenFrame = document.createElement('iframe'); }             }] Quick Answer: Does One Ticket Affect Your Insurance? When a team of scientists led by Georgia Institute of Technology’s Patricia Yang got ahold of some Tasmanian wombat roadkill, they looked to the intestines for answers.             pbjs.addAdUnits(adUnits);                 params: { } else if (width >= 768) { These critters produce up to 100 bowel movements in a single night. }); Are wombats friendly? timeout: 8000,                 params: {             mediaTypes: {                         [970, 250]                 }         googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || [];                     ] Question one bespeaks of our species’ destructive desire to domesticate any animal that looks remotely like a children’s toy: red pandas; bush babies; slow lorises; bearded tamarins, mouse lemurs; three-toed sloths… nothing is safe, not even wombats.                         [300, 600]                         [300, 250] adSidebarHeight = event.size[1];                 } Are wombats cuddly?                 }] You can read more about wombats and their strange feces (pictured below) at io9. While wombats do use their scat to mark territory, “it's not like they're trying to build little brick pyramids,” he says.             },{ What the finches ate required beaks best suited to eat it.             },{                     accountId: '14664',                 labelAny: ['phone'],                         [300, 250]                     siteId: '80880', });                 } And the answer behind it isn't as simple as "square-shaped butthole." Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD.                     ] googletag.defineSlot('/66393171/URTPB', [5, 5], 'div-gpt-ad-1494604518117-0').addService(googletag.pubads()).setTargeting('contentId', 593145 || ''); Tear jerking morality aside, keeping an endangered animal in captivity is illegal. Wombats' odd poop has long been a curious and fun animal fact. Wombats' odd poop has long been a curious and fun animal fact.                 bidder: 'appnexus', googletag.defineSlot('/66393171/RX_INCONTENT_MPU', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1477418482414-0').addService(googletag.pubads()).setTargeting('contentId', 593145 || ''); By studying the digestive tracts of the common wombat (on subjects who had died from natural causes), the scientists found the marsupial excrement solidified in the last eight per cent of the intestine. Quick Answer: Do Wombats Have Square Buttholes… They really                 bidder: 'rubicon', googletag.defineSlot('/66393171/RX_INCONTENT_MPU3', [300, 250], 'div-gpt-ad-1478299608650-0').addService(googletag.pubads()).setTargeting('contentId', 593145 || '');                 labelAny: ['tablet', 'desktop'],                     inventory: rubiconInventory pbjs.que = pbjs.que || []; The common wombat has appeared on a 1987 37-cent stamp and an Australian 1996 95-cent … try { Thank heavens.                     sizes: [ OK, not quite that simple anyway.             }] pic.twitter.com/Q7C9erGyd8, — National Poo Museum (@PooMuseum) September 15, 2018.                 labelAny: ['phone'], How Many of These Brain-Teasers Can You Solve? });                     accountId: '14664', They also have powerful front legs and claws used for digging and burrowing.                 bidder: 'appnexus', We are talking actual cubes—as in a six-sided Rubik’s Cube sort of cube. var pbjs = pbjs || {};         } : {}; The scientists did it.                 }                     accountId: '14664', if (event.slot.get('ad_position') === 'header') { Yep, today’s news is, wombats produce cube-shaped faeces, despite not having cube-shaped anuses. But how and why would an animal produce square shaped poo? googletag.pubads().addEventListener('slotRenderEnded', function(event) { (Jury’s out as to whether competing males try to knock over each other’s poop stacks, but if they’re anything like my kids, they would totally do that.). Question: What Is The Size Of A Homestead?                     placementId: '236175133536307_274908856329601' pbjs.setConfig({                     accountId: '14664', Are wombats cuddly?                     zoneId: '439690',                 banner: {             },{             },{                 labelAny: ['tablet', 'desktop'], googletag.pubads().setTargeting('properties', '');             },{             },                 params: {                     placementId: "11301203" What’s more, the wombats figured out how to stack it like my kid stacks his blocks—the higher the better so the scent will travel farther.         function sendAdserverRequest() {             },{                     inventory: rubiconInventory             googletag.cmd.push(function() { By using modelling balloons to inflate the intestine, they observed the organ stretching unevenly, unlike in the rest of the intestine, thereby allowing the unique shape to be produced at the very end of the digestive period. The scientists did it.                 banner: { Being cube-shaped, these walls of wombat waste don’t roll away – clever little dudes. googletag.defineSlot('/66393171/RX_INCONTENT_MPU2', [[300, 250], [1, 1]], 'div-gpt-ad-1477425969097-0').addService(googletag.pubads()).setTargeting('contentId', 593145 || '');             },{ No, Random Internet Users: Wombat poo isn’t like Play-Doh, where all you have to do to make it come out like a square or a star is shove it through a different mold.                     ] } The Woodpecker and Cactus Finch have probing beaks to find grubs in holes and dead tree branches. OK, not quite that simple anyway. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin. var segments = (function(){var b=new RegExp(encodeURIComponent('_prps')+'=([^;]+)'),c=b.exec(document.cookie);return null!==c?decodeURIComponent(c[1]):null})();                         [300, 250] adHeaderHeight = event.size[1];             code: 'Sidebar_DFP',             code: 'div-gpt-ad-1480592127963-0',             segments: permutive.state.queryManager.userSegments.join(',') How we test gear. JSON.parse(segments).join(',') : ''); });                     inventory: rubiconInventory                 labelAny: ['phone'], where = document.getElementById('ias-%%CACHEBUSTER%%');                     sizes: [ The scientists did it. hiddenDoc.close()             },{ OK, not quite that … Mashable - Our long international nightmare is over: We finally know why wombats poop out cubes.                 } Thank heavens.                 }                 bidder: 'ix', })(); var width = document.documentElement.clientWidth;         },{ How is cubic poop more advantageous than pellets, tubes, coils, or just squishy piles? The scientists did it.                         [970, 250],                     inventory: rubiconInventory if (typeof rubicontag !== 'undefined') { Wombat poo is cubic, not because the wombat has a square-shaped anus, but because it has a very long and slow digestive process, typically 14 to 18 days, which allows the digestive matter to. Let’s think back to September of 1835 when Charles Darwin noticed the curved beak shapes of the Galapagos finches: “In the same way that a knife which has to cut all sorts of things may be of almost any shape,” writes Darwin in The Origin of Species, “a tool for some particular object had better be of some particular shape.”.                 params: {                 labelAny: ['phone'],                     zoneId: '439690',                 params: {                     siteId: '80880',                     id: '9',             mediaTypes: { “Now we have this third method.” The next time you’re looking to manufacture “non-axisymmetric structures using soft tissues” look no further than the Australian Wombat.                 bidder: 'ix',                 }            on average. They pile up their dung, the bigger the better, and the smellier the better, to make sure no other wombats stray onto their turf. This panoply of square droppings isn't just evolution evincing a sense of potty humor.                 bidder: 'rubicon',             if (googletag.pubads().getTargeting('permutive').length === 0) { Question: Are Public Defenders Bad Lawyers? if(width >= 970){             }]                 }                     siteId: '208120',             },                 bidsBackHandler: sendAdserverRequest                     zoneId: '439708', Our long international nightmare is over: We finally know why wombats poop out cubes. So, presumably after their first experiment of lifting up a wombat’s tail and not finding a square anus threw a spanner in the works, Yang and a team of scientists set about finding out how these marsupials produce their square poop. Wombat intestines have periodic stiffness, meaning stiff-soft-stiff-soft, along the circumference to form cubical faeces. What is the Size of a Homestead can only produce cubes by moulding them or cutting them produce... 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