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How do wombats poop cubes? (2021)
- changoplatanero 4mo agoAll that work I did for my PhD and I could have been studying this topic instead...
- comrade1234 4mo agoI climb a lot around the forests where I live in Switzerland. In one area there are a lot of yew trees - deadly to mammals. Just 30 grams of the needles will stop your heart. The bright red berry tastes very nice and isn't poisonous but the seed, if just one seed has a crack in it and you swallow it it will stop your heart in about thirty minutes. German kings have used it to kill themselves after being defeated by Roman armies so that they don't have to surrender. Anyway, there's an animal here, I assume marmots, that swallows the berries whole and shits them out as a half-digested diarrhea onto the tops of rocks, logs, anywhere high enough to mark their territory. Probably better than shitting out a charcoal briquette that you hope won't roll over... but they seem to know not to chew and crack the seeds.
- MillironX 4mo agoWe covered yew extensively in toxicology class in vet school, but I didn't know about any animals that eat the berries. My favorite fact about yew is that the Iowa State Lloyd Veterinary Center is named after a toxicologist, yet has yew planted for decoration all around the building.
- zhoBEENG 4mo agoIf they die within 30 minutes, you would never see the scat of those who crack the seeds.
- xattt 4mo agoThere has to be a term for these very specific claims. 30 g in 30 minutes? Give me LD50 numbers.
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoTaxine alkaloids[0] The estimated lethal dose (LDmin) of taxine alkaloids is approximately 3.0 mg/kg body weight for humans.[27][28] Different studies show different toxicities; a major reason is the difficulty of measuring taxine alkaloids.[29] It goes on to say that rats are ~20mg/kg, which would put a human at somewhere less than 1.4grams. Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxine_alkaloids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxine_alkaloids
- esperent 4mo ago> Which is close enough to, "any exposure at all will kill". How much is in one seed? I could only find a few sources saying that you would need to eat about 50g of the needles to reach the LD, and that's... A lot. There's no way a child would accidentally manage that, for example (even assuming LD for a child is much lower). But I couldn't find specific numbers for seeds. Not being a killjoy here, I grew up around yew trees and I was always told to be careful of them, but not with any sense of panic that would suggest "any exposure at all will kill”. I think you'd have a bad time even with low exposure but death seems unlikely by accident.
- golem14 4mo agoA child might not need the whole 50g. Not a good way to go, BTW: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4462509/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4462509/
- ErroneousBosh 4mo ago> There's no way a child would accidentally manage that, for example (even assuming LD for a child is much lower). But I couldn't find specific numbers for seeds. My partner was worried when we moved into our current house that our then-18-month-old son would eat the poisonous cotoneaster berries on the bush in the garden. But it turns out the LD50 is something like 50g/kg which means that even for a 12kg child they'd be eating huge heaping bowlfuls of them before anything happened. As it turns out, he did eat one of the cotoneaster berries, spat it out, and went looking for some of the far nicer tasting alpine strawberries instead. The cotoneaster berries taste quite particularly horrible, and no-one is going to ever eat even close to the LD50 of them.
- taneq 4mo agoThis reminds me of the old “bats use sonar and can fly super precisely without crashing into each other in pitch black” and then it turns out that they crash into each other all the time.
- Kim_Bruning 4mo agoYou have a source or observation for that? All I can find is the exact opposite, that they do just fine even in challenging conditions.
- 0x000xca0xfe 4mo agoI often cycle a road with lots of bats hunting and one evening two slammed into my face and upper body (and one only avoided by ducking quickly). It's pretty obvious that they are not perfect navigators.
- type0 4mo agoIf you watch them fly it always looks more chaotic than birds.
- taneq 4mo agohttps://www.vice.com/en/article/bats-crash-into-each-other-all-the-time-high-speed-cameras-reveal/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/bats-crash-into-each-other-a...
- nickdothutton 4mo agoThey are planted in graveyards in the UK, it prevents grazing animals from entering and soiling up the place. The animals seem to know to keep away. They cant nibble the grass without getting a mouthful of the needles.
- golem14 4mo agoI hear Yew is uniquely poisonous to horses (I mean, they are especially susceptible to it)
- lostlogin 4mo agoThe more I learn about horses the more they seem like a creature that’s continually trying to die - and humans get to try and stop them succeeding.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- test6554 4mo agoPerhaps that's how aliens would see humans. Perpetually trying to die except for a small group of humans fighting disease, monitoring and protecting climate, keeping order, etc.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoHorses are especially susceptible to *everything*. Millenia of selective breeding to try for the healthiest strongest animals we can, and they're still shit. They'll get ill if they breathe wrong. They'll get ill if they eat a mouthful too much or too little of grass that's ever so slightly too green. They'll get ill if it's too rainy or not rainy enough. How the hell did they even evolve?
- vova_hn2 4mo agoSelective breeding for being useful to humans, not for being able to survive on their own.
- xattt 4mo agoThere was a yew bush on my walk to primary school. When berries were in season, I used to pick and squish the berry between my fingers because the shape was unique (berry with a seed that sticks out‽) ands its slimy feel. Thank goodness it never amounted to anything more, even through transdermal absorption.
- idiotsecant 4mo agoOh wow I think we had these on the way to school when I was a kid too. Everyone told us not to eat them so we used to put the berries in our mouth and spit them out to show how tough we were. Wow we were very very stupid kids.
- seszett 4mo agoI think one of the problems is people thinking kids are more stupid than they are, and blanket "don't do that" statements without explanations don't really work for kids. If they had told you they were highly poisonous instead of just telling you "not to eat them" you might have taken them more seriously. And if they had given you a taste of the red berry around it (which is sweet but not that special either, and the texture is not great) you might just have thought it was not necessary to play with them at all. But that requires education at all levels, around here (Belgium) I sometimes see parents who seem deadly afraid of anything nature, I tell my kids to eat blackberries and they softly tell their kids next to us not to do that. You end up with generations who just don't know anything about what's around them and will eventually do stupid things.
- vidarh 4mo agoIt takes longer than people tend to think before kids learn to infer things well at all, and so being explicit about causal chains tends to make kids more likely to take advice. E.g "put your coat on" might not lead the child to think it is cold, and even a "put your coat on, it's cold outside" might still not lead the child to realise that means they'll freeze without the coat. A lot of tantrums would be avoided if parents were more explicit about why they're giving certain advice.
- hypfer 4mo ago> if just one seed has a crack in it and you swallow it it will stop your heart in about thirty minutes. That is complete bullshit and you shouldn't be posting it this confidently. Those seeds are very poisonous, yes, but not in that cartoonish way. It's not cyanide.
- NooneAtAll3 4mo agoeven cyanide isn't cartoonish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6hOVhQQ9hI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6hOVhQQ9hI substance itself is not what kills you - it's the dose
- lostlogin 4mo ago> substance itself is not what kills you - it's the dose Doesn’t that apply to every single thing that exists?
- reltnek 4mo agoThe old toxicology proverb is: "The dose makes the poison"
- butlike 4mo agoI like to extend it to: "the portion makes the poison." Beyond getting the alliteration, it also includes food, which I think is important. A glass of water won't kill you, two gallons of water will. An ice cream cone once in a while is nothing; one every day will make the doctor's eyes go wide.
- hackeraccount 4mo agoJesus. I had a colonoscopy. Don't tell me about drinking 2 gallons of water. I won't even get started on an ice cream cone a day.
- qingcharles 4mo ago
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 4mo agoI don’t care if it is poison. Never gonna give yew up.
- butlike 4mo agoYew gonna eat that?
- imtringued 4mo agoMost plants evolved to have their fruit eaten whole and seeds simply pooped out because of the fertilizing effects of animal feces and the fact that the seeds end up dropped far away from the parent plant. That includes large fruit with massive seeds like mangos.
- plasticeagle 4mo ago"exceptional excrement" "sharp-sided scat" "To get to the bottom of the mystery" "...aptly titled journal Soft Matter." Great to see someone having some fun writing an article.
- NDlurker 4mo agoI was so confused by wombat poop the first time I saw it. Wasn't sure what I was looking at so I poked it with a stick.
- jbosh 4mo agoThe pun in the title is just world class.
- classichasclass 4mo agoIf someone hasn't submitted this for an Ig Nobel, it would be a calamity.
- MrBuddyCasino 4mo agoDoes the ignoble exist for anything else besides making fun of easy targets, like a bunch of sniveling teenagers?
- defrost 4mo agoYes. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoNever have I considered the ignoble to be making fun of anyone. It is recognizing real, if bizarre, research. Science asking some real questions that make you appreciate the wonder of the universe.
- MrBuddyCasino 4mo agoInteresting. Somehow I never see people referencing them in this spirit, but that may be more on those people than on the price itself, perhaps.
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoIt literally won years ago[0]. On reading the headline, I thought that was where it would link. [0] https://improbable.com/ig/winners/ https://improbable.com/ig/winners/
- ggm 4mo agoI'm reminded of Professor Hermione Lee of the University of York English department facing a stuttering student explaining the contextual meaning of the word "quaint" in middle English poetry: Spit it out man! It means CUNT. Can we stop with this "poop" nonsense. Number #2 and other forms, it's shit English, it's stupid. It's feces. Or shit. Or that fine old English word Turd.
- globular-toast 4mo agoI also really hate the word "poop". Its use as a noun and a verb here is particularly irritating. It just seems so childish.
- manarth 4mo agoMost school/education networks will have proxies and firewalls which limit access to "sensitive" destinations. Avoiding triggering a profanity filter is a reasonable and sensible approach to publishing, for an educational site which wouldn't want to exclude part of their target audience.
- lemming 4mo agoThe always excellent Oatmeal: We need to have a conversation about wombats https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats https://theoatmeal.com/comics/wombats Possibly NSFW, depending on your W.
- 3eb7988a1663 4mo agoWell, Mr. Oatmeal is apparently repeating an urban legend. I look at a wombat, and no way do I believe that thing can move at 25 mph (40 kph). I found a piece[0] which indicates this might have been some confusion as to metric vs imperial decades ago that was then retransmited through the ages. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-04-13/how-fast-can-a-womat-actually-run-faster-than-usain-bolt/103648118 https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-04-13/how-fast-can-...
- itchingsphynx 4mo agoAnd yet the very article that you refer to confirms that anecdotal reports by the biologists studying these very animals report that during breeding seasons that the male Southern Hairy-Nose Wombat can reach these speeds in bursts: >South Australian wildlife biologist [A/Prof] David Taggart has studied the southern hairy-nosed wombat since 1993. In the 2008 and 2024 editions of Strahan's mammal book, he writes that the southern hairy-nosed species can run at 40 kph. "I can confirm that I have clocked this species running at just over 40 kph, although they can't maintain that for long." More non-peer reviewed information here from the Australian national science agency: https://connectsci.au/news/news-parent/3758/Turns-out-wombats-can-run-at-40km-h https://connectsci.au/news/news-parent/3758/Turns-out-wombat...
- seriocomic 4mo agoWe have four on the boundaries of our property. My 'Goldidor' (Labrador/retriever cross) has given chase a few times and has struggled to keep up. When they run they RUN. Maybe not pushing 40kph, not not far from it...
- lostlogin 4mo ago
- ultimoo 4mo agowell written and has a distinctly human feel to it, compared to the slop we get to read these days.
- franciscop 4mo agoA bit of a tangent but I've read this phrase almost verbatim in another article[1] today: > "This study is really good," says Sunghwan Jung, a biophysicist at Cornell University who studies the mechanics of animal movements and was not involved with the research. It shows, he says, that the guts of these animals "are very special." The other article [1] quote: > It’s “an impressive step,” said Jack Szostak (opens a new tab), who studies the origins of life at the University of Chicago and was not involved in the research. “I don’t know of any other effort to put together an artificial cell from biological components that has progressed so far.” Are these editorial guidelines to get an independent read? Just coincidence? I don't think they are LLM bits because I expect better from these magazines, but it's too eerily similar. [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-first-time-a-cell-built-from-scratch-grows-and-divides-20260701/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-the-first-time-a-cell-bui...
- ambicapter 4mo agoI think this is just a way of breaking up the quote that adds attribution in the middle. Probably a common reporting phrasing more so than an LLM invention (Or maybe it's a real quote in both cases, but they used an LLM to write parts of the article, just making sure the quotes are correct in the end).
- doctoboggan 4mo agoYes, good science writing almost always gets an opinion from someone not involved in the research for the article. I would guess varying definitions of "not involved" depending on the repute of the publication.
- franciscop 4mo agoYes I understand, it's just the feeling I get is a bit odd, like the thing you get at the end of the ad like "9/10 doctors recommend this".
- arjie 4mo agoIsn't the more parsimonious explanation that science journalists and writers have scientist friends or advisors who they consult when something interesting happens? I imagine their correspondence going something like: "Hi, Jack, came across this thing where they claim to have created artificial life. Is it real?" "It's an impressive step..." "Hey, Jack, there's this new thing called LK-99 that everyone is excited about. Why?" "It's not real" Some amount of `site:www.quantamagazine.org "Jack Szostak"` querying on Google seems to indicate this might be the case. Though I have to say it's probably not everyone who has a Nobel laureate on their rolodex for a quick "hi, is this real?"
- vlian2088 4mo ago>Hu speculates that because the animals climb up on rocks and logs to mark their territory, the flat-sided feces aren't as likely to roll off from these high perches. and those who of them who shit cubes ended up more likely to procreate...?
- AussieWog93 4mo agoSurely it has something to do with their square arseholes.
- thebigship 4mo agoThis is most amazing when you click into the study[0] and see the supporting materials linked to at the bottom like a .mov of a rotating 3d model of wombat poop[1] [0]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-abstract/17/3/475/708006/Intestines-of-non-uniform-stiffness-mold-the?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-abstract/17/3/475/708006/Int... [1]https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-supplement/708006/mov/d0sm01230k2_suppl/ https://pubs.rsc.org/sm/article-supplement/708006/mov/d0sm01...
- srean 4mo agoRelated: drilling square holes, not as much fun as a wombat though.
- nelox 4mo agoIt’s hip to be square
- arkis22 4mo agoDiscipline
- soupspaces 4mo agohttps://ciechanow.ski/wombat-poop-cube/ https://ciechanow.ski/wombat-poop-cube/
- fuzzythinker 4mo agohttps://soundcloud.com/noamhassenfeld/wombat-song https://soundcloud.com/noamhassenfeld/wombat-song My kids can't stop laughing Wombat Song by Noam Hassenfeld Ending of Vox Unexplainable Podcast on Wombat cube poops
- nephihaha 4mo ago"God does not play dice with the wombats." – Einstein (maybe.)
- ErigmolCt 4mo agoIf Einstein had known about this, physics might have gone in a very different direction
- throw310822 4mo agoTurns out He definitely plays with the dice of the wombats.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo agoMojang should add them as a mob... and then have their poop be little spheres.
- ErigmolCt 4mo agoNature keeps finding engineering solutions we would never arrive at from first principles
- rob74 4mo ago> Distinctive intestines mold feces into sharp-cornered poop ...written directly above a photo of the subject matter that clearly does not have sharp corners (which is all for the best, I guess, poor wombats!), not even sharp edges, just flattened sides.
- yilugurlu 4mo agoI was literally thinking this the other night ahahha, and forgot to ask ChatGPT in the morning; nice that I found the answer here.
- reassess_blind 4mo agoInteresting. I always thought stools had tapered ends to prevent the door from slamming shut.
- kevsim 4mo agoThey eat six square meals a day! I'll leave now...
- diginova 4mo agoNo offence but reading this in the silence of my workplace, it was so difficult to control my giggling and laughter reading everyline and it just kept getting funnier XD
- Otterly99 4mo agoI hard the pleasure to assist David Hu's talk a few years ago where he presented his work on feline tongues, frogs tongues and wombat poop. Really fun guy. I always wondered how he got his funding because studying the "physics of animals" must not be on the top of the list of most funding agencies.
- ppppo 4mo ago> Wombat dissections show that cubes are formed within the last 17 percent of the intestine. the article itself is paywalled, I wonder how did they get the wombats to dissect.
- elil17 4mo agoThey found one that got hit by a car
- instagraham 4mo ago>That just leaves one mystery: why wombats evolved cubic poop in the first place. Hu speculates that because the animals climb up on rocks and logs to mark their territory, the flat-sided feces aren't as likely to roll off from these high perches. Whenever I read such snippets from biology, I wonder how natural selection pressure can lead to such specific outcomes. Wombats that mark their territory better over centuries or millennia are more likely to survive? Marking territory is more a form of communication than anything else, but its effect are subtly strong enough over time to lead to a discernible selection pressure for square-pooping wombats over others? I often wonder how more biologists aren't believers (though I'm not necessarily one myself), when they encounter such intricate design in biology every single day
- HarHarVeryFunny 4mo agoYes, it seems the "why" here is more interesting than the "how", and is indeed going to be a matter of speculation. As far as evolution in general, the big picture is more about "punctuated equilibrium" than incremental change. Individual genetic changes from parents to child are typically just benign and so accumulate in any inter-breeding population without much effect. Once in a while the environment may shift in some fairly major way (easier for environment to change quickly than genetics) and then an accumulation of previously benign changes may suddenly become collectively impactful in a positive or negative way. I don't see any reason to assume that square poop was ever selected for - maybe it's just a harmless consequence of some genetic change that was impactful in another way. Speculating that square Wombat poop evolved to not fall off rocks is a "just so story" that raises more questions than it answers.
- GuB-42 4mo ago> I often wonder how more biologists aren't believers Many observations are unexplained, and not just in biology. The difference between believers and atheists is that atheists stop there: it is unexplained, at least for now, that's how things are. Believers will instead attribute it to god, or some other form of higher power. In the end, it just shifts the problem, at some point you will have to admit that some things just are and there is no explanation, for atheists, these are the things themselves, for believers, it is god who made the things. That's why being a believer or being an atheist doesn't have much to do with being a biologist. It is just a philosophical view of how you deal with the unknown and the unknowable. The only thing is that the religious dogma should not get in the way of proper science. That life is so beautiful that god must be behind it (are we still talking about poop cubes?) shouldn't prevent biologists from searching for an evolutionary explanation. Also, evolution is mostly random, not everything needs natural selection, sometimes, things happen for no good reason. Maybe a particularly prolific male in a particularly successful colony happened to have a square poop mutation or something.
- skeeter2020 4mo agoI first read this in 2001 on an outhouse door while treking in Tasmania: ODE TO THE WOMBAT As you pound along the track Eyes wide open and ears pinned back You may have noticed those queer square turds And thought, if not expressed in words, The pain of such defecation Baffles the imagination. But it ain't done to entertain us— The wombat has an oblong anus. So if at night you hear pained cries Outside your tent, feel no surprise. With eyes shut tight, teeth clenched with pain, A wombat's gone and crapped again!
- vivzkestrel 4mo agoeven i am pooping cubes thanks to IBS-C since last 6 months. I have no idea how to reset it.