Throwback: Happy Thought for 20 September 2019

Have a happy thought:

Wombats are adorable creatures. They’re marsupials, which are just weird anyway. They can run up to 40km/hr (!!). And the name for a group of wombats is a wisdom. “Wow, see that wisdom of wombats over there?” See? You’re smiling just saying it!

Image: JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) - Own work, Wikipedia Creative Commons credit

But the best part of the wombat is their bum. Here’s why, in two parts:

1. These creatures live in burrows, which have really obvious entrances (see photo below). So they have to worry about predators getting into their burrows and to the young wombats (called joeys, like most other marsupial young). So the wombats will dig extra holes, that don’t actually go anywhere. And when a predator (like a dingo) comes, the adult wombat will “escape” down this fake burrow, and when the dingo chases it down the hole, the wombat will **crush the dingo to death against the top of the burrow with its furry wombat bum!**

Image: Eliza Bennett

 

2. They have cubical poo.

Yep, that’s right, their poos are cubes. I even took a picture of this myself on my last vacation (this is how I was sure the picture above was definitely a wombat burrow and not just some random hole in the ground):

Image: Eliza Bennett

How does this even?! Well, I’m so glad you asked -- this is the subject of the 2019 Ig Nobel* prize in Physics. “Near the end of the (wombat’s) intestine … feces changed from liquidlike states to solid states made up of small, separated cubes. (Then, the)… varying elastic properties of wombats' intestinal walls allowed for the cube formation.” https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/aps-seh111218.php

What’s really neat though is this process was previously unknown to manufacturing engineering, so this may lead to new ways of producing square and cubic items, more cheaply and more consistently than current processes.

 

* For more of the 2019 Ig Nobel prizes, keep scrolling:

Reminder – Ig Nobel prizes are given out for research that makes you laugh… and then makes you think.

• PHYSICS PRIZE  - for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.
• REFERENCE: “How Do Wombats Make Cubed Poo?” Patricia J. Yang, Miles Chan, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, paper presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, Abstract: E19.0000, November 18–20, 2018.
• MEDICINE PRIZE - for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.
• REFERENCE: “Does Pizza Protect Against Cancer?“, Silvano Gallus, Cristina Bosetti, Eva Negri, Renato Talamini, Maurizio Montella, Ettore Conti, Silvia Franceschi, and Carlo La Vecchia, International Journal of Cancer, vol. 107, no. 2, November 1, 2003, pp. 283-284.
• REFERENCE: “Pizza and Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction,” Silvano Gallus, A. Tavani, and C. La Vecchia, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 58, no. 11, November 2004, pp. 1543-1546.
• REFERENCE: “Pizza Consumption and the Risk of Breast, Ovarian and Prostate Cancer,” Silvano Gallus, Renato Talamini, Cristina Bosetti, Eva Negri, Maurizio Montella, Silvia Franceschi, Attilio Giacosa, and Carlo La Vecchia, European Journal of Cancer Prevention, vol. 15, no. 1, February 2006, pp. 74-76.
• MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE  - for using a simple animal-training technique— called “clicker training” —to train surgeons to perform orthopedic surgery.
• REFERENCE: “Is Teaching Simple Surgical Skills Using an Operant Learning Program More Effective Than Teaching by Demonstration,” I. Martin Levy, Karen W. Pryor, and Theresa R. McKeon, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, vol. 474, no. 4, April 2016, pp. 945–955.
• BIOLOGY PRIZE - for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches.
• REFERENCE: “In-Vivo Biomagnetic Characterisation of the American Cockroach,” Ling-Jun Kong, Herbert Crepaz, Agnieszka Górecka, Aleksandra Urbanek, Rainer Dumke, Tomasz Paterek, Scientific Reports, vol. 8, no. 1, 2018: 5140.
• ANATOMY PRIZE - for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.
• REFERENCE: “Thermal Asymmetry of the Human Scrotum,” Bourras Bengoudifa and Roger Mieusset, Human Reproduction, vol. 22, no. 8, 2007, pp. 2178-2182.
• CHEMISTRY PRIZE - for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child
• REFERENCE: “Estimation of the Total Saliva Volume Produced Per Day in Five-Year-Old Children,” Shigeru Watanabe, M. Ohnishi, K. Imai, E. Kawano, and S. Igarashi, Archives of Oral Biology, vol. 40, no. 8, August 1995, pp. 781-782.
• ENGINEERING PRIZE - for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.
• REFERENCE: “Infant Washer and Diaper-Changer Apparatus and Method,” US patent 10034582, granted to Iman Farahbakhsh, July 31, 2018.
• ECONOMICS PRIZE - for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria.
• REFERENCE: “Money and Transmission of Bacteria,” Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss, Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control, vol. 2, no. 2, 2013.
• PEACE PRIZE - for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch.
• REFERENCE: “The Pleasurability of Scratching an Itch: A Psychophysical and Topographical Assessment,” G.A. bin Saif, A.D.P. Papoiu, L. Banari, F. McGlone, S.G. Kwatra, Y.-H. Chan and G. Yosipovitch, British Journal of Dermatology, vol. 166, no. 5, 2012, pp. 981-985.
• PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE - for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.
• REFERENCE: “Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis,” Fritz Strack, Leonard L. Martin, and Sabine Stepper, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 54, no. 5, 1988, pp. 768-777.
• REFERENCE: “From Data to Truth in Psychological Science. A Personal Perspective,” Fritz Strack, Frontiers in Psychology, May 16, 2017.

 

More about the 2019 Ig Nobel prizes here https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/the-2019-winners/