Cubes, Poops and Pee [Random Fact] (Totally safe for work

Random Facts about the Wombat

Wombats are jacked, 1 m long rodents living in Australia. Of course they are marsupials - it's Australia. Living things Down Under seem to be either marsupials, deadly or both - except for koala bears. These little buggers have been stacking poos for 20 to 40 million years. What the heck!? That's a lot earlier than the discovery of the wheel which may have started 4500 BCE.

They are literally stacking cubes of poo to mark territories. Because, why wouldn't they?!

Why, How, Cubed Poo?

Wombats are the only animals that cube their poop. As most herbivores (I'm looking at you, dear panda), they have very long intestines in comparison to their size.

What seems to do the trick is that the intestinal walls have alternating sections of firm and stretchy sections.

The study [How do wombats make cubed poo?] was led by Patricia Yang.

What about Pee?

The pee connection is via a co-author of the cubed poo study: David Hu. He earned the Ig Nobel Prize for the speed of mammal urination.

The result is: all mammals empty their bladder in approximately 20 seconds, irrespective of size, be it elephants or mice.

Bonus: Heartbeats in a lifetime

The similarity between mammal pee durations leads to another similarity: the number of heartbeats in mammals during a lifetime.

It turns out that mammals have approximately the same number of heart beats over their life.

Small mammals have very fast heart beats - and short lives.

The bigger the mammal, the slower the heart beat and the longer the life.

Remarks about the Panda

Pandas are rare in their own way, that they moved from being carnivores (short intestines) to herbivores (usually a long intestine) but keeping their short intestines. That is the reason why they are constantly munching away at tasty bamboo. The food passes through their short intestines too quickly to extract enough nutrients.

The cow on the other hand has not just long intestines. It has 4 extra sections in its stomach.

Since we were talking about methods of marking territories before. Wombats are stacking high. Pandas are peeing high. The higher the male panda can mark trees with pee, the more dominant the it is.

Circle - The End

This completes the circle. From marking territories with poo, over common ratios between mammals, to marking territories with pee.

PS Koala Bear

The koala is NOT a bear! Again, its a marsupial. Because, it's Australia. And it is the closes living relative of wombats. The koala, just like the panda, made a few wrong dietary choices. It only eats eucalyptus which neither has a lot of calories nor a lot of nutrients. It also makes them high. They are constantly high.

Maybe they chose their diet deliberately... It makes sense to look at it from a different perspective. What would you choose: shit bricks or get high - constantly?

As an added bonus you get to pretend to be a bear!