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Wombats: Weird & Wonderful

kamalktk

kamalktk

Antediluvian
Joined
Feb 5, 2011
Messages
7,218
That sounds painful.

https://www.theguardian.com/science...s-unravel-secret-of-cube-shaped-wombat-faeces

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Of all the many mysteries that surround the common wombat, it is hard to find one as baffling as its ability – broadly acknowledged as unique in the natural world – to produce faeces shaped like cubes.

Why the pudgy marsupials might benefit from six-faced faeces is generally agreed upon: wombats mark their territorial borders with fragrant piles of poo and the larger the piles the better. With die-shaped dung, wombats boost the odds that their droppings, deposited near burrow entrances, prominent rocks, raised ground and logs, will not roll away. That, at least, is the thinking.
 
They should just crap pyramid shaped droppings in the first place, cut out the middle man.
 
Just to illustrate ...

common-wombat-scat.jpg

SOURCE: https://museumsvictoria.com.au/article/the-science-of-poo/​
 
Wombat poo can easily be mistaken for doggie treats.
 
They also shit in the same place everyday (or rather night). We have a number that live around us and one that deposits his or her cubes on the telephone/broadband pit on the street outside of my house.
 
Lord Lucan said:
They also shit in the same place everyday (or rather night). We have a number that live around us and one that deposits his or her cubes on the telephone/broadband pit on the street outside of my house.
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Get some gloves on and build a pyramid out of them! :cool: .. that should confuse the hell out of the critter when it returns and sees your poo pyramid. Plus it'll keep neighbours from trying to get to know you apart from the braver neighbours who take the time to ask why you're doing it. That's when real friendships are formed .. bonus!
 
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hunck said:
That could freak you out were a wombat to creep up behind you on a dark night.
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They are as cute as can be (though many now starving after the recent fires) but they can be destructive.
Five years ago, we had one enter under our home after some heavy rain as it's burrow was flooded. It caused $14,000 damage to our central heating system and brickwork (they're solid animals, like barging poles on legs). Fortunately our insurance covered the repair bill as they are native animals.
 
Lord Lucan said:
They are as cute as can be (though many now starving after the recent fires) but they can be destructive.
Five years ago, we had one enter under our home after some heavy rain as it's burrow was flooded. It caused $14,000 damage to our central heating system and brickwork (they're solid animals, like barging poles on legs). Fortunately our insurance covered the repair bill as they are native animals.
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Seriously? .. they're tiny?.I had no idea they were that sturdy .. sort of like how honey badgers are hardcore then?
 
Swifty said:
Seriously? .. they're tiny?.I had no idea they were that sturdy .. sort of like how honey badgers are hardcore then?
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A big one can be 1 meter long and weigh 30-35 kilos. And they're solid. Like a bag of concrete. One thing you don't want to ever do is run over one. Whilst you'll kill it, it'll remain intact. Drive along any Australian country road and you'll see dead wombats that've been hit by cars. They just look like they've gone to sleep. You're car will have a huge damage bill. If a wombat actually goes under your car when driving, you may as well kiss your car goodbye.
wombat.jpg
 
Lord Lucan said:
A big one can be 1 meter long and weigh 30-35 kilos. And they're solid. Like a bag of concrete. One thing you don't want to ever do is run over one. Whilst you'll kill it, it'll remain intact. Drive along any Australian country road and you'll see dead wombats that've been hit by cars. They just look like they've gone to sleep. You're car will have a huge damage bill. If a wombat actually goes under your car when driving, you may as well kiss your car goodbye.
View attachment 22993
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Jesus .. is he especially large or is she especially small?.. or he's average?
 
Lord Lucan said:
A big one can be 1 meter long and weigh 30-35 kilos. And they're solid. Like a bag of concrete. One thing you don't want to ever do is run over one. Whilst you'll kill it, it'll remain intact. Drive along any Australian country road and you'll see dead wombats that've been hit by cars. They just look like they've gone to sleep. You're car will have a huge damage bill. If a wombat actually goes under your car when driving, you may as well kiss your car goodbye.
View attachment 22993
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Do Roo bars make any difference and does speeding up help? That's what we were advised if we were going to hit a roo, to knock it forward, rather than onto the car. Obviously these guys are a lot closer to the ground.

I held a koala in a place in a wildlife park and even they were surprisingly solid and heavy.
 
Wombats are low to the ground and the ting with them is their colour, you just don't see them until you're upon them. Their grey/brown shade just blends them into the road. I doubt a roo bar would make much of a difference.
We live in an area heavily populated by them and in the evenings and at night, you have so be super aware as they tend to graze by the sides of the road.
Although I've never actually seen one hit, most weeks there are a few fresh kills on the roads that we drive from home to work. My assumption is that they are either killed instantly and are knocked to the side of the road, or are stunned, make it to the edge and then die. Also, people will drag roadkill to the side to prevent further accidents.
You will often see dead wombats with an ''X'' spray painted on them. That means that either the local council or one of the local wombat rescue groups have checked it's pouch (if female) in case it has a joey.
A guy I know who's an electrician was on the way to a job some years back when he hit a kangaroo at speed. The roo came over the bonnet and through the windscreen, still alive and kicking. The injuries he sustained from it, not the subsequent accident he had, sent him to hospital for a couple of weeks.
 
Wombat well diggers.

Wombats on a New South Wales Hunter Valley farm are being hailed as heroes for burrowing down to an underground soak and supplying water to an array of native fauna hit hard by drought.

Key points:
  • A well dug by wombats has attracted a variety of native fauna to the unique water source
  • The wombats have been compared to water diviners by one biologist because of how they dug right at the location of the underground water source
  • It's not known why the wombats dug there, whether it was intentional or happy accident

Beef farmer Ted Finnie's property sits 30 kilometres south-west of Merriwa, an area of the valley that has had almost no rain for the past three years. He said the hole has been there for long time, but has recently grown larger as wombats dig deeper during the drought.

"It's best described as being a crater," he said."Being about 20 metres in diameter, with the rim of the crater going down maybe four metres into the ground. And as the crater has dried out due to the drought the wombats have burrowed to get closer to the water and so they've gone underground a little bit."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-07/water-diviner-wombats-bring-animals-to-water-hole/11937990
 
The ancient remains of
Mega-wombat the size of a bear discovered!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/amp/53187206
A new wombat-like species that lived around 25 million years ago has been discovered in Australia.

Named Mukupirna nambensis, this ancient wombat was an absolute unit! Mukupirna, means "big bones" in the Aboriginal languages spoken in south Australia.

Weighing more than a giant panda at 150kg and described as a "powerful beast" it was at least five times larger than all living wombats today.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...d-a-new-prehistoric-wombat-cant-have-too-many
 
It turns out wombats are biofluorescent, too ...
Stop Everything - It Turns Out Wombats Also Have Biofluorescent Fur

First we discovered platypus would look great at a rave, now wombats, bilbies and other marsupials can join the blacklight party - with scientists unexpectedly finding they all glow wonderfully fluorescent greens, blues and pinks beneath UV light.

Over the last few years scientists have found biofluorescence is more common across mammals than we realised - with flying squirrels that glow a bubblegum pink, prompting researchers to see how far back this trait exists in our mammalian heritage by checking out monotremes like the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) - the most ancient still living mammalian lineage.

Naturally, once the platypus's glow was revealed, other researchers like Western Australian Museum curator of Mammalogy, Kenny Travouillon and biologist Linette Umbrello, started shining UV down on different specimens in the museum's collections.

And so far their findings have been far from disappointing, with revelations of neon wombats and bright-eared bilbies. ...

"We have only tried it on maybe two dozen mammals, so it wasn't a thorough search." Travouillon told ScienceAlert. "Probably around a third of them did glow." ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-n...and-other-australian-mammals-biofluoresce-too
 
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