{"id":243477,"date":"2026-01-14T03:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T03:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/243477\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T03:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T03:37:07","slug":"new-study-finds-square-feces-may-deliver-information-improbable-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/243477\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNew study finds square feces may deliver information\u201d \u2013 Improbable Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some of the researchers who investigated the physics of why some wombats have cube-shaped poo [and who subsequently won a prize for having done that] have been pursuing the related question of \u201cwhy\u201d. The University of Georgia broadcast <a href=\"https:\/\/news.uga.edu\/why-do-wombats-have-square-poop\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">news of how they are faring<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">New study finds square feces may deliver information<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Most people have a preferred way of communication \u2014 phone, text, email \u2014 but bare-nosed wombats have an unusual way of relaying information.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The Australian marsupial communicates by \u2026 there\u2019s no delicate way to say this \u2026 poo.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Led by the University of Georgia\u2019s Scott Carver, a new study published in the Journal of Zoology considers whether the marsupials from down under are communicating through the unusual scat that they deposit in common latrines across southeastern Australia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The research follows earlier work that won Scott Carver the <a href=\"https:\/\/improbable.com\/ig\/winners\/#ig2019\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">2019 Ig Nobel Prize for physics<\/a>, a satirical prize awarded for science that makes people \u201claugh, then think.\u201d In that research, Carver and collaborators investigated how wombats create square-shaped poos, finding that the unique shape and structure of the animal\u2019s lower intestine create feces that resemble charcoal briquettes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u201cPeople always say, \u2018But why do wombats produce cubes?\u2019\u201d said Carver, corresponding author of the study and a professor in the UGA Odum School of Ecology. \u201cAnd this research was much more about addressing that. What is the functional role of cube-shaped feces for wombats?\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n<p>The study is: \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1111\/jzo.70068\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Deriving the functional significance of olfaction in a solitary non-territorial herbivore: The bare-nosed wombat Vombatus ursinus<\/a>,\u201d by K. McMahon, G. M. While, D. S. Nichols, A. Edwards, D. L. Hu, and S. Carver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the researchers who investigated the physics of why some wombats have cube-shaped poo [and who subsequently&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-243477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}