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Wombats, burrowing marsupials from Australia, are the only animals known to produce cube-shaped droppings.

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The story behind the card

A team led by Patricia Yang and David Hu at the Georgia Institute of Technology studied wombats that had died in road accidents in Tasmania. They found that the last part of the intestine has stiffer and more elastic bands side by side, and as the droppings slowly dry and move along, those uneven walls press them into cubes with fairly sharp corners. A wombat can leave 80 to 100 cubes a night, often on rocks and logs where it marks its territory, and the flat sides may help stop them rolling away. The work won the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize in physics, a light-hearted award for research that makes people laugh, then think.

Türkçe oku
Vombatlar, küp biçiminde dışkı bırakan bilinen tek hayvanlardır. Bu keseli hayvanlar Avustralya'da yaşar ve yuvalarını toprağı kazarak açar.

Georgia Teknoloji Enstitüsü'nden Patricia Yang ile David Hu'nun yönettiği bir ekip, Tasmanya'da trafik kazalarında ölen vombatları inceledi. Bağırsağın son bölümünde daha sert ve daha esnek şeritlerin yan yana durduğunu buldular. Dışkı yavaş yavaş kuruyup ilerlerken bu düzensiz duvarlar onu köşeleri belirgin küplere dönüştürüyor. Bir vombat bir gecede 80 ila 100 küp bırakabilir; bunları çoğu zaman bölgesini işaretlediği kayaların ve kütüklerin üstüne koyar, düz yüzeyler de küplerin yuvarlanıp düşmesini önlüyor olabilir. Çalışma 2019'da, önce güldüren sonra düşündüren araştırmalara verilen esprili bir ödül olan Ig Nobel'in fizik ödülünü kazandı.

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