Wombat Digestive Systems

I once heard a comedian talk about how having the internet in our pockets bred the death of wonder, where instead of musing about answers, we can just search until our curiosity is satisfied.

That comedian was a whore and a liar.

I’m assuming. I know they were a liar. Let’s just go with both being true for now.

I love having the internet at my disposal. True, there’s an argument to be made about how cell phones have cultivated an unhealthy system of being perpetually reachable, by both friends and work, but the internet in my little pocket computer? Brilliant.

When your brain works at warp speed, you go from the day’s problems to your upcoming plans to staring at goat testicles wondering why they’re so fucking big.

So like every normal person with a dodgy search history, I google that shit. A lot of times it leads to really amazing adventures through information I wouldn’t otherwise find out. Like that Rollie Pollies are crustaceans! And have pouches! And baby pill bugs are just smaller, softer pill bugs!

Which led me to think that maybe I should share my good google fortune.

Yesterday somebody shared an article about anuses and how they came to exist, and I can’t think much about anuses without thinking about wombats. Weird, I know, but a while ago I learned that wombats poop cubes. Wild, right? But, in the nature of anuses, theirs are round.

Cubed poop. Round hole.

I KNOW

And I had to know why.

Luckily, this involved google, instead of magic school-bussing up into a wombat rectum. Come to find out, instead of being one uniform food tube, wombat intestines have grooves, stiffer areas and softer areas. The way their bowel processes and squeezes food to derive nutrients and moisture slowly smooth the side and press the material into a flat-sided cube.

Or, at least, that’s as best as I understand it. Have a read for yourself! And don’t miss out on the 3-d model that includes the, uh, tapered bit…ahahahaha

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/how-do-wombats-poop-cubes-scientists-get-bottom-mystery