The secret of cubic wombat feces has been revealed. You can also make sausages

As it turned out, for wombats, the process of defecation has not only physiological significance, with the help of feces

individuals communicate with each other.Each wombat can defecate up to 100 times per night. In this way, the animal marks the territory in which it lives. As a rule, wombats leave piles of cubic feces on high ground. Scientists were able to find out that an individual coming to a foreign territory is able to “read” information about the wombat living there from these piles: the smell and location of feces are taken into account. Since excrement is cube-shaped, it does not roll off hills, which is important for marking territories.

To find out the nature of such an unusual shapefeces, the researchers built a mathematical model that simulates the activity of wombat intestinal motility. And if the very first version of the origin of cubic “letters” for relatives was the unusual shape of the anus of wombats (which is not true - it is common in animals), then it was the model that showed that the cubic shape is obtained as a result of the interaction of soft and hard areas of the intestine with digested food. These areas are found in the last 17% of the intestine, which has a total length of approximately 10 m.

A similar technology can be used in food production, scientists say. For example, in meat processing plants to give cubic sausages. It is not known if development is already underway in this area.

Note that scientists also suspected that wombats deliberately mold cubes from feces. But this version turned out to be false.

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