2. Wombats Poop Cubes
Given the whole "
Drop Bears" thing, you would be forgiven for being suspicious of anything an Aussie tells you about the local wildlife. So, when you first learn that wombat droppings are actually cube shaped, it's fairly natural to assume that you're being f**ked with again, in the hope that unsuspecting tourists might spend their holiday inspecting animal poop in the search for magical square dung. This one, however, is true. Wombats literally sh*t bricks. It's thought that the distinctive cuboid leavings are that shape to make them more effective at marking territory. Wombats like to take their dumps in visible places such as the tops of logs, and the flat sides help prevent the poop from rolling away. No one has a conclusive answer as to
how wombats get their poop into such a distinctive shape. We know that they don't have square buttholes, so the shape must form further up. One hypothesis is that the upper digestive tract has ridges that mould the shape, then the very long lower tract removes pretty much all of the moisture out of it, allowing it to retain its shape as it is, er,
passed.