Happy Thought for 12 December 2025

 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!**

A person standing in front of a hole in the ground AI-generated content may be incorrect.

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):

A pile of poop on the ground AI-generated content may be incorrect.

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.


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

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