It is the only animal that we know of that produces cubed poo you're very excited!
Oh, look at that!
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Yes! Today we're dealing with one of my favourite substances in the natural world.
I thought you'd like this one.
We're talking about poo, animal poo and I have a collection of animal poo so I thought
I'd test Megs with a few of those items now Megs-
I thought I could smell something was coming-
Yep, yep, yep, they're all from the UK and in fact I collected these in the garden,
so I didn't go very far to get these, they're small
relatively round pellets let's see if I can hold it up to the camera see if we can get that there
let's have a look, yes, look at that. Now normally they're deposited in piles of about eight or ten.
Okay well based on their size they're a small mammal, based on what I know we have in the garden
they're grey squirrel.
They are grey squirrel, one out of one, pretty good, pretty good.
It's a good track record, I don't consider myself to be a faecal connoisseur like you, but-
Now, what about these have a whiff first.
Oh that's what i could smell they are stinky.
No come on this is nice stuff isn't it, let's have a look at that there. Yes!
Look at that, beautiful!
It's very smelly stuff, based on the volume of the poo
and the very characteristic smell it's got to be only one thing, that's bat droppings.
It is bat droppings and one has just escaped onto the table there.
these are serotine bat droppings and I collected them from an old mill in Hampshire last year
with someone with the appropriate license I hasten to add. Last one then this one is uh
quite a tricky one this one I'm gonna hold it up here to see if you can see what that is
What do you think? Yes look at the twist on that see that little spiral on there perhaps produced
as it twisted through the animals intestine or maybe out of its anus.
This is a tricky one because
it feels quite different, I know foxes have the ability to kind of produce that spiral in their
poo particularly at the end.
They often put a twist in the tail of their poo.
Yeah but their fox poo is quite hairy and it
doesn't quite look like this it's not as wide as that.
But what about the weight of that.
This is, is this a real poo?
Yes it's a real poo.
I know what you've done, this is dinosaur poo isn't it?
No haha! Pretty close, pretty close. It's not technically
dinosaur but it is fossilized poo it's called a coprolite that's what we call fossilized poo
and it came from a marine reptile called an ichthyosaur, so this is fossilised poo now top that!
Is that a challenge? I like a challenge, I like this challenge and I will bring you one! I will bring you one.
Now for this we are going to have to go all the way over to Australia where
there is a very beautiful endemic mammal, I'm of course talking about the wombat it's a beautiful
very very cute mammal it's entirely herbivorous I mean seriously.
Okay they're attractive animals
there are three species left in the world at the moment one is very endangered uh, the hairy-nosed wombat
the other two species aren't doing too well the introduction of non-native animals
to Australia wasn't a good thing for them nor was the loss of habitat which continues nor
the fact I've got to tell you Megs, people used to eat them.
Oh no no.
No they did! They used to make wombat stew
and it was really popular.
Oh dear that's no good is it.
No good at all.
No, they're such an amazing unique animal I don't know why you'd want to put them in a stew but ecologically speaking they
are simply fascinating now they're a marsupial animal similar to that of kangaroos where they
carry their young in pouches on their bellies it just makes them that much
cuter but their poo is also pretty fascinating now you'll be happy to know how to have
a fresh batch of wombat poo. What could be finer. What could be finer. Here we
are have a look at this though because there's something unique about it so take a look.
See what you think, do you want to hold that up for me? Hold that up, have a look at the shape of this poo it's very characteristic
Very surprising what you might notice there is the definitive edges
because that poo your eyes aren't deceiving you, that poo is cubed.
It's cubed poo.
Cubed poo. It is the only animal that we know of that produces cubed poo.
You're very excited aren't you.
You're very excited.
Do you know what I've seen wombats I saw a wombat once, just glimpsed it, it bolted down it's burrow.
Yeah they live rather like badgers in extensive burrow systems, and as soon as we spotted it, it ran away and I didn't think to get out the car rush over and see if
I could retrieve any of its poo and now I've finally got my hands on some cubed poo. You're very excited about that.
Just so good so so it's amazing the way that they produce this cubed
poo though now of course they live in a really hot and dry environment so their poo is actually
incredibly dry it only contains about 40% water and if you compare that to humans we have about 75%
so they want to extract all the water possible from their faeces to live in that dry
environment and they're producing at quite an alarming rate I mean a wombat will produce
80 to 100 cubes of poo a day. 80 to 100 a day! They are pumping the cubes out they certainly are aren't
they amazing stuff but why that's the big question. Why cubed? There has to be an ecological reason
for it to be cubed and why as well. In nature there's a reason for everything nothing happens
by accident and if it does happen by accident it doesn't work it never happens again so there's
always a reason for it what's the reason for cubed poo. Well scientists previously have come up with
three hypotheses right and I'm gonna give them to you now see what you think about these ones
the first one is that they have square anuses. No absolute nonsense never seen a square anus
in my life and I've been looking, seriously I mean even if it were square when the poo came
out it would reform into a pellet shape. Okay so you don't like that one. No. Okay the other option
is that their pelvic bones when their poo is pushed through it forms into a cube state.
Yeah but when it gets on the other side of the pelvis the pelvis isn't right at the anus so when
it got the other side again it would reform into a typical ovoid poo. Because it would have to
go through a circular anus very true okay this is my favorite one the third one okay so the wombats
poo a normal spherical shaped faecal deposit but then they turn around and they use their paws
to shape it. Nonsense you said they produced 80 a day.
Yes. And they're going to turn around 80 times a day and pat with their little paws to
to make their own poo, I mean they wouldn't have time to do anything else. I love the idea of
it ecologically makes zero sense whatsoever but whoever came up with that hypothesis you've put a
smile on my face. Nonsense, nonsense. Well we can amaze you now by telling you that finally after years of
supposition and some nonsense scientists have actually discovered why wombat poo is cubed yes
and it comes down to those intestines not only does the food stay in there for two weeks most
it also has very long intestines now your average wombat is about a meter in length but its
intestines are 10 meters in length we've got some bunting here just to show you how long those 10
meter intestines would measure if they were taken out of the wombat. It just keeps going and going
Look at that and now you may want to look away because it's a little bit of a gruesome picture
but we do have a photograph of some excised wombat intestines here these have been removed from an
animal that was unfortunately hit by a car and there you can see in the photograph all of the
pellets as they move through this long length of intestine but do look down to the bottom left hand
corner of the photograph where you can see that after being round for quite a lot of that process
they suddenly start to become a little bit more cubic. Look up there number 35 right at the top
it's long it's not sectioned out it's kind of I don't know a big gloop if you want and then
towards the end back to number one you can see where those squares are defined that's amazing.
So to find out how the wombats produce cubic poo the scientists contacted vets in Tasmania
and asked them that if any animals were brought in perhaps having been hit by cars
that were then unfortunately euthanised could they have the bodies so they could investigate them and
they did this and took out those intestines now the first thing they did was use a clown
party balloon to inflate the intestines so that they could examine its structure more
closely and here you can see a small section of wombat intestine enveloping that yellow balloon
and wrapped around that intestine that's the brown bit there you can see these rings with little
marks on and the scientists use those to see how much that particular piece of intestine could
expand and contract and they did this for the whole length of the wombat intestine and what they
found was that certain sections of that intestine were much stronger than others they took a lot of
energy to expand but then could rapidly contract and that rapid contraction was what put the first
two flat sides on the wombat poo then it continued to move through the gut until it got to another really-
goodness me I can't- powerful section that rapidly contracted and that put another couple of sides on the wombat
poo these things are clearly not for me these are made for people with uh what we say arms that
don't look like this. So it's by passing through these relatively different parts of intestine
that the wombat poo is turned into a cube but you've got to take a look at this, this is a CT
scan of a wombat laying on its belly looking from the back to the front and there you can see
in the middle the poo moving through its gut and if you want to believe it you can even see
that it's slightly cubed now what about that I love it when scientists have access to this sort
of technology to answer these sorts of questions. You know I didn't realise what i was missing from
my life until this moment i was missing the cross section of our wombat intestinal system yeah with
cubed poo i mean it's what dreams are made of. Well it is it is what dreams are made of you
know when i was first learning about wombats age six all those years ago i never dreamed that I'd
see that and that's what it's all about it's about the relative strengths of parts of that intestine
to squeeze the poo in to these cubes and of course because as you say Megs it's pretty dry
once it's squeezed like that it doesn't sort of go ovoid again because it's not squidgy
it's much drier than most animals poo what about that. How many contractions- Job done as they say.
It is good well almost, how many contractions do you think it takes in the intestine for it to
produce that cube? Uh I don't know tell me? Forty thousand. Forty thousand thousand contractions for it to get its shape.
It's working hard isn't it it's working hard to get the cubed poo.
There's a lot of energy in that and of course animals don't expend energy and do things for no reason there's
got to be a good reason for having cubed poo now think of the habitat in which wombats live they
live in quite rocky environments sometimes up quite high and animals don't just poo anywhere
they poo in very strategic places because their poo contains a lot of information often poo
is coated in certain scents whether that be hormones, pheromones, that are then released into
the wind to communicate with other individuals within that population or even other species. Now
cubes are very good in terms of a shape to stay in one place now have a look at this photograph
this is a pile of wombat poo on a rocky outcrop. Imagine that okay, so there's the poo
right, you be the rock there, right now imagine I'm another wombat and I'm coming along and I'm
accidentally knocking your poo or your own wombat knocking the poo it doesn't roll because it's
cubic look. Exactly. It's really hard to- if that were round that would have rolled off of your palm
but it's not rolling because it's got those flat sides you see it's doing a great job of staying
in the right place. It means the message isn't going to move anywhere and all that information is
going to be delivered whether you're a wombat that's looking for a mate whether you're a wombat
that's just letting everyone know of your own territory, that message is staying in one spot
and not rolling off of that log so that's why they go to all of that trouble with their intestines
so that the poo doesn't roll away and they can communicate effectively. Well that's what we think
there's speculation but probably. This cubic poo has rocketed into my excrement charts at number
one. Oh wow that's a big thing. Fantastic stuff we hope it's amazed you too if you see anything else that
amazes you do let us know we might feature it in one of our broadcasts but until next time that's
goodbye from us and i've got to tell you Megs next time we're going to have to work really hard
to trump cubed poo!
I don't know how we're going to do it.
Oh so so so good!
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