Speaker 1: Ahoy, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's
Speaker 1: chuck and this is short stuff about wombats. Is that
Speaker 1: the sound they make? I know? But it is for
Speaker 1: people who live outside of Australia. Okay, Well, this short
Speaker 1: stuff came about just from our recording two days ago
Speaker 1: on which one was that in? Was that in the appendix? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Appendix because we talked about digestion and pooping. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you said something about wombats having square poop and I
Speaker 1: was like what you were like yeah, and you, because
Speaker 1: you're in front of my face, you showed me a
Speaker 1: picture which was amazing. Didn't even maybe you texted it
Speaker 1: to me too, because you're so used to doing that.
Speaker 1: And I said, we should do with short stuff on
Speaker 1: this and we are two days later, by god, and
Speaker 1: we're doing it. We are we're talking about square poop,
Speaker 1: square poop, square square poop. There, let's start to say
Speaker 1: yeah and something else and it came out weird there there?
Speaker 1: What's going on? I don't know? I will say this
Speaker 1: though this after researching this, this really clears up that
Speaker 1: old saying that I had heard since I was a
Speaker 1: kid that had never got which is that guy as
Speaker 1: square as wombat. I guess I've not heard that before.
Speaker 1: You never heard that? Have you really heard that somebody
Speaker 1: say that? Yeah, like some you know, you'll see some
Speaker 1: nerd that guy is square as wombat. I was like,
Speaker 1: what does that even mean? You just keep saying that. Huh.
Speaker 1: I love it. I think we should start it. I
Speaker 1: just made it up today, Okay. So regardless of all
Speaker 1: these phrases, there's there's really only one animal on the
Speaker 1: planet that poops in cubes, and that is the wombat.
Speaker 1: And I think in particular the bear knows wombat, which
Speaker 1: are by the way, chuck about is cute as they come. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Australia has got two things. They have animals that will
Speaker 1: kill you dead and animals that you only want to hug. Yes,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I will kill you dead too, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's that's the great thing about Australia. So these the wombats,
Speaker 1: they're they're used described as stout. They're very thick, they
Speaker 1: have short legs, but they're really powerful and they'd use
Speaker 1: them to dig. They have long claws that they used
Speaker 1: to dig subterranean burrows in and their cousins of the
Speaker 1: koala and they kind of look like they look a
Speaker 1: bit like a cross between a koala and a little
Speaker 1: tiny bear, a stuffed animal, if we're basically, But I
Speaker 1: suspect that because of those sharp clause you don't want
Speaker 1: to get between a mama wombat and her baby wombat,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And they're also bigger
Speaker 1: than I thought. For some reason, I thought wombats were
Speaker 1: fairly small, but they weigh up to seventy seven pounds
Speaker 1: or thirty five kilograms if you're in Australia. And uh,
Speaker 1: they're pretty territorial, but they do share their space with
Speaker 1: their friends. They is very cute. They will mark their
Speaker 1: um trails and stuff with scent and those little cube
Speaker 1: shape poops which I don't think we even mentioned yet.
Speaker 1: They poop out a hundred six sided turds every single day. Man,
Speaker 1: you use the T word, I mean, is that a
Speaker 1: bad word? It's not bad, it's just it's one of
Speaker 1: my most hated words of all. Well, it looks even
Speaker 1: grosser spelled out for something. Everything about it is terrible.
Speaker 1: It even itself even looks brown somehow, I'm not sure how,
Speaker 1: but it does. Everything about it is wrong. Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I should say this now, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say this. Go ahead, Okay, are we going to
Speaker 1: leave that in there? Yeah, let's leave it in. And
Speaker 1: people would be like, oh, man, but you said it's
Speaker 1: six sided t words, all right, so it looks like
Speaker 1: they look vaguely like dice. And and even if you're like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it's a cube, it's not a
Speaker 1: perfect cube. Look at your poop and then look at
Speaker 1: wombat poop and see which one's closer to cube like,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna say, oh, yeah, definitely the wombat. And
Speaker 1: then if you stop and say, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: the wombat is is the only animal on the planet
Speaker 1: that poops cubes. This is kind of weird and maybe
Speaker 1: worth investigating. And for a long time, no one wanted
Speaker 1: to kill a wombat to dissect it and figure out
Speaker 1: what was going on in there, so we just basically
Speaker 1: walked around and said it must have something of a
Speaker 1: square shaped rectum. I guess that's it. That's gonna solve
Speaker 1: the thing. Well, yeah, but I think the very first
Speaker 1: thing that someone did was look, you know, on the
Speaker 1: on the hind quarters and say, no, that as round
Speaker 1: as round can be. Yeah, I think they were expecting
Speaker 1: one of those Platos squeezed through shapes, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. But they're like, it's it's a star,
Speaker 1: it's an octagon, you know. It was just a normal
Speaker 1: size um round bottom hole. Yeah, and anus. I think
Speaker 1: a researcher even put his finger in there just to
Speaker 1: make sure. He's like, no, it's round. Oh gosh, there
Speaker 1: we go. I think we should. Oh yes, you're the
Speaker 1: guy who said turns and now you're suddenly grossed out.
Speaker 1: Well you say bottom hole. Then he said, put his
Speaker 1: finger in right, put his finger in the momp at bottom.
Speaker 1: After thirteen years, I never know where you're gonna fall. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's great. I like to keep you on your toes.
Speaker 1: And here's another one for everybody out there. This is
Speaker 1: gonna keep you on your toes. We're going to add
Speaker 1: break all right. The first study was looking under that
Speaker 1: tail and they said, nope, it's round and it's an anus.
Speaker 1: It's not a Plato machine. The second test they did,
Speaker 1: like you said, they didn't want to kill him. They
Speaker 1: found one that was hit by a car at the
Speaker 1: University of Tasmania and Dr Scott Carver said, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm I'm treating these or I'm looking into reading
Speaker 1: mange disease and wombats. Anyway, so let me dissect this thing.
Speaker 1: Let me look at the intestines, and holy moly, they
Speaker 1: have a couple of grooves in their intestines where they're
Speaker 1: a little more elastic than the rest. And that was
Speaker 1: in eighteen and I think a couple of years later
Speaker 1: is when they did a further test, right, yeah, at
Speaker 1: our own Georgia Tech down the street. Was that a tech? Yeah,
Speaker 1: David Who or Hugh biomechanics researcher at Georgia Tech. UM
Speaker 1: lad this the second American group UM into wombat intestines
Speaker 1: and why wombat poop is square. They don't mention that
Speaker 1: David Who and his UM team waited for a wombat
Speaker 1: to get hit by a car like the Australian researchers.
Speaker 1: It just says they dissected to wombats, So probably best
Speaker 1: not to ask too many questions around that. Well. Also,
Speaker 1: how did they get a wombat in Atlanta? Exactly? They
Speaker 1: were just maybe they had them shipped in and then
Speaker 1: they just kind of pushed them out towards seventy see waits,
Speaker 1: you know, let nature take its course. Yeah, or they
Speaker 1: just picked up the phone and called any Australian number
Speaker 1: and some guy said, I'll get you two wombats. What's
Speaker 1: your what's your address or whatever they call an address.
Speaker 1: That's pretty great. Um. So regardless, they got their hands
Speaker 1: on a couple of wombats, may have been alive, may not.
Speaker 1: We're not quite sure exactly what happened there. But they
Speaker 1: really focused on the intestines in that elastic part, and
Speaker 1: they found that not only is there a region that's
Speaker 1: more elastic, that's um less constricting in the intestines of
Speaker 1: the wombats than other parts, they also found one part
Speaker 1: that's stiffer than the rest, and that all of this
Speaker 1: weirdness in the intestines takes place in about the last
Speaker 1: sevent of the wombats intestines and that it's here finally
Speaker 1: figured out that the square poop starts to take its shape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it happens because I mean, I think, um, the
Speaker 1: stiff portions like a stiff rubber band. Oh, basically, the
Speaker 1: whole thing like a rubber band. The stiff portions are
Speaker 1: like a stiff rubber band, which isn't a thing. I
Speaker 1: hate to break it to David Doo and the softer
Speaker 1: regions are more droopy and kind of hang down, so
Speaker 1: it creates like this wave like action. And the whole
Speaker 1: key to me seems like how slow these forty contractions
Speaker 1: happen to get this poop out? It seems like it's
Speaker 1: just a very slow process and just kind of molds
Speaker 1: it into a little square or yep. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have like a pretty long digestive tract, but the wombats
Speaker 1: and testines are ten times longer than the wombat itself,
Speaker 1: and it's digestion process takes about four times longer than
Speaker 1: the humans. It gets every bit of moisture and water
Speaker 1: out of it, every nutrient it can possibly get, so
Speaker 1: it poops out these very dry, cubed poops. And it
Speaker 1: does that because the digestive process takes so long. But
Speaker 1: the other key to it to chuck is at the
Speaker 1: contractions of moving the poop through the intestines um. In
Speaker 1: basically every other animal on Earth, those contractions and the
Speaker 1: movements are the same everywhere around the intestine. The wombat is,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, the only animal that has
Speaker 1: different sections that move differently at different times UM and
Speaker 1: that's what produces the edges and the squares in the
Speaker 1: shape of the square poop. They finally figured it out.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it helps a lot
Speaker 1: if you're a biomechanics researcher, because they they are not
Speaker 1: the best at explaining things, so it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to get. It's one of the things that you just
Speaker 1: have to say, Oh, the intestines moved differently than other intestines,
Speaker 1: and it has the time to create these sides and shapes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like a perfect little square compression machine.
Speaker 1: M you know that it's set up to be that way,
Speaker 1: which sort of lends itself to the question like, well,
Speaker 1: why is this happening? Then if it's this perfect little
Speaker 1: machine making these uh, little square poops that frankly look
Speaker 1: quite delicious and edible, um, because they're so dry, it
Speaker 1: looks like a little candy treat or something. It's just
Speaker 1: sunk in what you just said. What you just said,
Speaker 1: wombat poops look delicious? Well they do. It looks like
Speaker 1: a little chocolate confection to me. Uh. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you put one on a bunch of them on a
Speaker 1: plate at a party, I might actually mistake one, you know,
Speaker 1: did you just make air quotes but when you said
Speaker 1: a mistake? Jerk? All right? So uh it lends itself
Speaker 1: to the question like, why is this happening? Why is
Speaker 1: it making these perfect little cube poops? And who has
Speaker 1: an idea that hey, maybe you know, these things poop
Speaker 1: on rocks and tree logs and branches and stuff to
Speaker 1: mark their area and obviously something square will sit better
Speaker 1: and maybe evolutionarily speaking, that's just what happened over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean his guess is as good as any.
Speaker 1: He's the one who who dissected the wombats and found
Speaker 1: the whole intestine thing. And actually, I mean it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. I haven't heard any rival explanations.
Speaker 1: I should say. No, I mean he got a ignoble prize, right,
Speaker 1: he definitely did. Um. And he's saying like, I'm a
Speaker 1: biomechanics guy. They he published, by the way, the um
Speaker 1: the article in the journal Soft Matter for real um,
Speaker 1: And he's saying like, there's there's biomechanically speaking, we could
Speaker 1: probably use how the wombats and testines work as some
Speaker 1: sort of model or inspiration for shaping other things. But
Speaker 1: really the most immediate practical application it has is that
Speaker 1: um the dryer and square wombat poop is, the healthier
Speaker 1: the wombat is, so we can be used as a
Speaker 1: measurer standard um in for wombats and kept in captivity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like I'm contributing. I don't just go I'm
Speaker 1: not just a wanbat murderer, you know, I'm I'm contributing
Speaker 1: to the greater good. They're just those two. Let's not
Speaker 1: talk about them. Yeah, you just take a bite. You
Speaker 1: got super dry that. That's a healthy wanbat, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you pass it around the order tree any milk. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's a little well, it must be pollen season.
Speaker 1: So Chuck just laughed. There's a pregnant pause of awkward silence,
Speaker 1: which means, everybody short. Stuff is that stuff you should know?
Speaker 1: Is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.