Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Squarer Than Wombat Poop

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

One of the cutest animals on the planet is also the only one that squeezes out cube-shaped poop. Find out why today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ahoy and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.

And this is short stuff about wombats. Is that the sound they make? I know, but it is for people who live outside of Australia. Oh, okay. Well, this short stuff came about just from our recording two days ago on, which one was that in? Was that in the appendix? Yeah, appendix, because we talked about digestion and pooping. Yeah. And you said something about wombats having square poop. And I was like, what? And you were like, yeah. And you, because you're in front of my face, you showed me a picture, which was amazing. I didn't even, maybe you texted it to me too, because you're so used to doing that. And I said, we should do a short stuff on this. And here we are two days later by God,

and we're doing it. We are. We're talking about square poop, square poop, square, square poop. Yeah. I started to say, yeah, and something else. And it came out weird. There. There. What's going on with you? I don't know. I will say this though, this, after researching this, this really clears up that old saying that I'd heard since I was a kid that I never got, which is that guy is square as wombat. I guess I've not heard that before. Have you never heard that? Have you really heard that? Somebody say that? Yeah. Like some, you know, you'll see some nerd, that guy is square as wombat. I was like, what does that even mean? You just keep saying that, huh?

I love it. I think we should start it. I just made it up today. Okay. So regardless of all these phrases, there's, there's really only one animal on the planet that poops in cubes. And that is the wombat. And I think in particular, the bear knows wombat, which are by the way, Chuck, about as cute as they come. Yeah. Australia's got two things. They have animals that will kill you dead and animals that you only want to hug. Yes. But sometimes that will kill you dead too. Yes, exactly. That's, that's the great thing about Australia. So these, the wombats, they're, they're usually described as stout. They're very thick. They have

short legs, but they're really powerful and they'd use them to dig. They have long claws that they used to dig subterranean burrows in. And they're cousins of the koala and they kind of look like, they look a bit like a cross between a koala and a little tiny bear. A stuffed animal, if we're being honest. Yeah, basically. But I suspect that because of those sharp claws, you don't want to get between a mama wombat and her baby wombat. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And they're also bigger than I thought. For some reason, I thought wombats were fairly small, but they weigh up to 77 pounds or 35 kilograms if you're in Australia. And they're pretty territorial, but they do share their space with their friends.

It's so cute. That is very cute. They will mark their trails and stuff with scent and those little cube shaped poops, which I don't think we've even mentioned yet. They poop out 100 six-sided turds every single day. Man, you use the T word? I mean, is that a bad word? It's not bad. It's just, it's one of my most hated words of all. Well, it looks even grosser spelled out for some reason. Yeah. Everything about it is terrible. It even, the word itself even looks brown somehow. I'm not sure how, but it does. Everything about it is wrong. Oh, I don't know if I should say this. No, I'm not going to say this. Go ahead. Okay. Are we going to leave that in there? Yeah, let's leave it in and people will be like,

oh man, you got to tell us. But you said it six-sided T words, right? So it looks like they look vaguely like dice. And even if you're just like, I mean, I guess it's a cube. It's not a perfect cube. Look at your poop and then look at wombat poop and see which one's closer to cube like. And you're going to say, oh yeah, definitely the wombat. And then if you stop and say, well, wait a minute, the wombat is the only animal on the planet that poops cubes. This is kind of weird and maybe worth investigating. And for a long time, no one wanted to kill a wombat to dissect it and figure out what was going on in there. So we just basically walked around and said, it must have something of a square shaped rectum. I guess that's it. That's going to solve the thing.

Well, yeah. But I think the very first thing that someone did was look on the hind quarters and say, no, that is round as round can be. Yeah. I think they were expecting one of those Play-Doh squeeze through shapes. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. But they're like, it's a star. It's an octagon. No, it was just a normal size bottom hole. Yeah, an anus. And I think a researcher even put his finger in there just to make sure he's like, no, it's round. Oh gosh, there we go. I think we should. Oh, yes, you're the guy who said turds. And now you're suddenly grossed out. Well, you say bottom hole, then you put his finger in it. Right. Put his finger in the wombat's bottom hole.

After 13 years, I never know where you're going to fall. So that's great. I like to keep you on your toes. And here's another one for everybody out there. This is going to keep you on your toes. We're going to add break. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man.

And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're

going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. The first study was looking under that tail and they said, nope, it's round and it's an anus. It's not a Play Doh machine. The second test they did, like you said, they didn't want to kill them. In 2018, they found one that was hit by a car at the University of Tasmania and Dr. Scott Carver said, you know what? I'm treating these or I'm looking into treating mange disease in wombats anyway. So let me dissect this thing. Let me look at the intestines and holy moly, they have a couple of grooves in their intestines where they're a little more elastic than the rest. And that was in 2018. And I think a couple of years later is when they

did a further test, right? Yeah, at our own Georgia Tech down the street. Was that a tech? Yeah. David Hu, or Hu, a biomechanics researcher at Georgia Tech, led this second American group into wombat intestines and why wombat poop is square. They don't mention that David Hu and his team waited for a wombat to get hit by a car like the Australian researchers. It just says they dissected two wombats. So probably best not to ask too many questions around that. Well, also, they get a wombat in Atlanta. Exactly. Maybe they had them shipped in and then they just kind of pushed them out towards 75. See, wait, let nature take its course. Yeah, or they just picked up the phone and called any Australian number and some guy said,

I'll get you two wombats. What's your address or whatever they call an address? That's pretty great. So regardless, they got their hands on a couple of wombats, may have been alive, may not. We're not quite sure exactly what happened there. But they really focused on the intestines and that elastic part and they found that not only is there a region that's more elastic that's less constricting in the intestines of the wombats than other parts. They also found one part that's stiffer than the rest and that all of this weirdness in the intestines takes place in about the last 17% of the wombats intestines and that's here. Finally, they figured out that the square poop starts to take its shape. Yeah, and it happens because I mean, I think the

stiff portions like a stiff rubber band, basically the whole thing like a rubber band, the stiff portions are like a stiff rubber band, which isn't a thing. I hate to break it to David do. And the softer regions are more droopy and kind of hang down. So it creates like this wave-like action and the whole key to me seems like how slow these 40,000 contractions happen to get this poop out. It seems like it's just a very slow process and just kind of molds it into a little square or a cube. Yeah. I mean, we have like a pretty long digestive tract, but the wombats intestines are 10 times longer than the wombat itself. And its digestion process takes about four times longer than a human's. It gets every bit of moisture and water out

of it, every nutrient it can possibly get. So it poops out these very dry cubed poops and it does that because the digestive process takes so long. But the other key to it too, Chuck, is that the contractions of moving the poop through the intestines in basically every other animal on earth, those contractions and the movements are the same everywhere around the intestine. Right. The wombat is, as far as we know, the only animal that has different sections that move differently at different times. And that's what produces the edges and the squares and the shape of the square poop. They finally figured it out. It's one of those things where it helps a lot if you're a biomechanics researcher because they are not the best at explaining things. So it's

kind of hard to get. It's one of the things that you just have to say, oh, the intestines move differently than other intestines and it has the time to create these sides and shapes. Yeah. I mean, it's almost like a perfect little square compression machine. You know, it's set up to be that way, which sort of lends itself to the question like, well, why is this happening then? If it's this perfect little machine making these little square poops that frankly look quite delicious and edible because they're so dry, it looks like a little candy treat or something. It just sunk in what you just said. What? You just said wombat poops look delicious.

They do. It looks like a little chocolate confection to me. Okay. I mean, if you put one on a bunch of them on a plate at a party, I might actually mistake one. Did you just make air quotes when you said mistake? Jerk. All right. It lends itself to the question like, why is this happening? Why is it making these perfect little cube poops? Who has an idea that, hey, maybe these things poop on rocks and tree logs and branches and stuff to mark their area and obviously something square will sit better and maybe evolutionarily speaking, that's just what happened over the years. Yeah. And I mean, his guess is as good as any. He's the one who dissected the wombats and

found the whole intestine thing. And actually, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I haven't heard any rival explanations, I should say. No. I mean, he got an ignoble prize, right? He definitely did. And he's saying like, I'm a biomechanics guy. He published, by the way, the article in the journal Soft Matter, for real. And he's saying like, there's biomechanically speaking, we could probably use how the wombats and testins work as some sort of model or inspiration for shaping other things. But really, the most immediate practical application it has is that the drier and square wombat poop is, the healthier the wombat is. So it can be used as a measure or a standard for wombat kept in captivity. Oh, well, that's good. Yeah. So who's like,

I'm contributing. I'm not just a wombat murderer. I'm contributing in the greater good. They're just those two. Let's not talk about them. Yeah. You just take a bite. You go, oh, super dry. That's a healthy wombat. Right. Pass it around in the order trade and see what happens. Milk, by the way. It must be pollen season. So Chuck just laughed. There's a pregnant pause of awkward silence, which means everybody, short stuff is that. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.