Every so often, nature provides us with a joke that tells itself.
Fruit flies can get drunk. Ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises. Sea cucumbers can expel their internal organs out of their anus to entangle and deter predators.
Wombats, meanwhile, have cube-shaped poop.
That seems … odd.
If you think of a shape an animal might produce with its waste, your mind probably goes in the direction of organic, amorphous shapes, or maybe sphere-like pellets. Circles are organic. Squares, though?
The how is pretty straightforward: wombats have intestines that vary in rigidity. As food moves through their digestive tract, the stiffer areas of the intestines contract faster than the softer areas, so they sort of end up smashing the poop from the sides over and over again, and this inevitably results in something resembling a cube.
The why is maybe less clear, but this is what makes things so interesting. Why did that particular poop architecture survive, so more wombats who made little cube-doodies ended up making little wombat babies at higher rates?
One possible reason is marking territory. Wombats will often leave their poop on surfaces a bit off of the ground, like a log or flat rock. As anyone who has ever tried to “roll” a large box across some distance knows, this takes considerably more work than a spherical object of the same size.
Flat-sided cubes are just way less likely to roll away, so our wombat friends are able to use their scent as a marker, communicating with other wombats in the same way we might use language or a symbolic image to represent information.
Some folks communicate with words. Others communicate with poop.
It’s also possible that the cube shape, paired with how dry wombat poop is, provides the extra benefit of making it hard to be broken apart. That means the message is that much more likely to be received.
Incidentally, a wombat produces up to 100 cubes of poop every day.
Apparently, I can’t write enough about poop! I’ve created a “scatological greatest hits” for you, in case you’re nearly as enthusiastic about doodies as I am:
I’m okay with this obsession. Poop is an important part of life, and it’s something people aren’t very comfortable discussing or (sometimes) even thinking about. The thing is, we should be spending some time thinking about our poop. It’s an important barometer of your health, and learning about how it works can help to destigmatize your new obsession in your own mind.
What about you? Have your feelings on poop changed over the years? Do you feel like you have permission to talk and think about poop?
Where's a photo of wombat poop!!?
I just spent 10 mins down a poop word origination wormhole...thanks for that.