Square wombat droppings are a wonder of nature - National Geographic
Author: kar / PHOTO: Isifa
18. 01. 2012These angular droppings look like some kind of prank gone wrong by Mother Nature. But in reality, they play a vital role for the clumsy marsupials and their survival in the inhospitable Australian conditions.
Wombats spend most of their lives underground. They live there completely alone in a rather elaborate system of burrows. It is not surprising that they have very poor eyesight - so looking for a mating partner with this equipment is not easy.
The half-blind creatures have no choice but to find him using their sense of smell - the only sense they have really honed. Precisely for reproduction in the evening, principled vegetarians emerge from the safety of their burrows and carefully spread their strangely shaped feces around. Potential mates should know by smell that someone of the same species is nearby and interested in mating.
| The wombat is a symbol of Australia. You probably didn't know that Australia's most famous mountain, Ayers Rock, is actually named after this boring marsupial. In the Aboriginal language, the mountain is called Uluru - and that means wombat. It is said that the shape of this creature reminds the aborigines... Ayers Rock today belongs to the aborigines from the Amangu tribe, the original inhabitants of Australia. Ayers Rock is 550 million years old and today stands out of the flat landscape of central Australia as if it doesn't really belong there. It became interesting for tourists because of its photogenic nature, but also because it is completely unique from a geological point of view. It is the largest monolith in the world. The sandstone formation is 348 meters high and reaches a depth of five kilometers into the ground. The perimeter of the monolith is over nine kilometers. |
Wombat bays are most often found in elevated places, for example on rocks or logs. And why are feces angular? This strange and atypical shape is very demanding for the digestive tract of wombats - so it must have some special meaning. On the one hand, they are very noticeable, so even half-blind creatures will notice their shape. They can easily recognize that these prisms are not of "natural" origin, but that they are peculiar to their species.
The angular shape is easily eroded by wind and other environmental influences, so wombats can easily detect that the place is currently marked, and not some time long ago. The square shape has another advantage: it holds very well with its underside on a flat surface where wombats can reach.
Watch a video of Australian biologist Robyn Lawrence, who built a model of a wombat's digestive tract. It shows you exactly how the oddly angular shape is created:
Womb droppings have a lot of exceptional properties, both biologically and chemically. Australian paper manufacturer Darren Simpson even thinks that new processes for modernizing paper could be discovered from it. According to him, the most important thing is how wombats manage to get rid of moisture almost completely.
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