Wombats Are Nature's Little Cube Factory

Meet the wombat ? a sturdy, bear-like marsupial from Australia that minds its own business, eats grass, and somehow manufactures perfect little cubes. Not cubes-ish. Not vaguely rectangular. Actual, honest-to-goodness cubes, roughly two centimeters on each side. No other animal on the planet does this.

For years, scientists assumed there must be a rigid mold somewhere in the wombat's digestive tract ? a biological cookie-cutter, if you will. Turns out, the real mechanism is far weirder. The wombat's intestines have stretchy sections that alternate with stiffer sections, and this uneven elasticity squeezes the material into corners as it moves through. Nature essentially reinvented the cardboard box from the inside out.

The cubes aren't just a quirky party trick, either. Wombats are territorial, and they use their droppings as scent markers ? strategically stacked on rocks and logs. The cubic shape keeps them from rolling away, making them excellent little signposts. Evolution apparently decided that if you're going to leave a message, you should leave a tidy one.

A study published in the journal Soft Matter even earned its authors an Ig Nobel Prize for unraveling the intestinal physics behind this feat. So somewhere out there, a group of very serious researchers spent considerable time studying wombat digestion, and honestly, we are all better for it.