Wombats literally sh!t bricks – and now boffins reckon they know how The year is 2018 and planet Earth is on the edge. Tensions between the great powers are at boiling point, fires ravage the western United States, and the European Union is in disarray. But yesterday in Atlanta, Georgia, the world's finest minds gathered to answer the question on everyone's lips. How do wombats poo cubes? A …
Gettin' your hands dirty ain't smart where pathogens are lurking. Only in movies do "scientists" dig around in piles of steaming poop barehanded. Yick! Real scientists wear impervious gloves!
As do others who deal in icky substances. I saw a vet check a horse before sale to see if she was preggers. He put on a long vinyl sleeve thingie, then shoved his whole damn arm into the mare up to his shoulder. Stood there with a thoughtful look on his face, feeling around for a minute. He then declared her "clean" and removed the arm with the most godawful schlorping sound, and peeled off three feet of slimy glove. When I feel like IT is just too stupid for words, I think of that job and disk errors don't seem so bad.
I have several books on scat and use it in animal tracking. It's interesting in that UK animals that do the same (foxes for example) haven't evolved the same kind of thing. You do also see, in sheep, deer and other herbivores compacted scat at certain times of year being more compacted and square internally. I wonder if it's more an outcome of diet than not wanting them to roll away. Do they change in wombats by season, etc. I'll have to do some more reading.
(From someone who actually has a collection of scat from many of the UKs mammal species - we all need a hobby!)
Fox shit seems to stick to raised areas like tree stumps perfectly adequately on account of it still being a bit moist. I'm assuming now that wombats, living in a drier climate than foxes, would benefit from absorbing as much water as possible from their faeces before they excrete it - and for that reason require a different technique (shape instead of texture) to keep their shit stationary.
This post has been deleted by its author
For the sake of the not-so-old-fogies, here is a link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_the_Flying_Wombat
Sadly for many impressionable 1960's teenagers, myself included, this 13 part serial adventure, featured in "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again", fizzled out into silliness and we never did find the Green Eye of the Little Yellow Dog. We did get introduced to immortal characters, particularly the gargantuan Lady Constance de Coverlet, the oily Grimbling, and John Cleese's inner genius, Masher Wilkins. Long may they reign.
You'd be amazed what has been researched over the years.
Many, many years ago a chap by the name of Pickett did sterling work in the field of insect sex pheromones and how these might be used to control insect populations (if a male is flapping around with antennae full of sex pheromone, he isn't going to find many ladies).
Somewhat later, I did the same only for potato cyst nematodes. For a mercifully short time (until the videotapes were recycled by my PhD supervisor for recording Eastenders, or Pobl Y Cwm or something), I was the proud owner of the world's most boring sex-related videos.
Sex-related because this was film of male nematodes responding to scent gradients of sex pheromone on agar plates. Boring, because a male nematode in a hurry with love on his mind (and since males don't eat as adults, they always have love on their minds) travels at a few millimetres per minute, and to see any real speed the videos had to be watched on fast forward.
The research, whilst worthy of an igNobel, never got the publicity it deserved through not being around in the days of Youtube, not that this prevented the famous TCP Sliding Window video becoming famous (this was also recorded around this time).
If a car hit a wombat in Australia so fast that the wombat's body ended up in the USA, how fast was the car travelling?
Another question would be where did the car end up. Hitting a wombat at speed does serious damage to a car. If It could launch the wombat all the way to the US, the car would probably end up in orbit.
"If a car hit a wombat in Australia so fast that the wombat's body ended up in the USA, how fast was the car travelling?"
Depends on which direction the wombat was facing during flight.
Shirley you must account for the significant drag caused by the square arsehole.
Are they like LEGO bricks? Can you build with them? Do they come in prepackaged assortments with bright & colourful diagram instructions on how to build each model? Can they then be disassembled & put together any way we wish to make things of our own imaginative creation? Do they come in extra large sizes for children like Duplo, extra tiny like the advanced stuff, & with controller systems that allow us to motorize & cyberize the different creations? Can we buy them at the local Tesco/Walmart? Can we buy them in bulk from various resellers? Is there an Ebay market of used bricks? Can we buy specialty sets?
Last but not least, do I need to refill my dried frog pills?
Probably usable as charcoal -- they look dry enough -- if you can tolerate the smell; I wouldn't cook food with it!
Side note: Had the first flames in the fireplace for this "wintery season". It's amazing how the wood basically burns/converts into charcoal then burns the charcoal (but smells up the house appropriately). I'm getting quite efficient lighting and stoking it without a lot of unburnt fuel, a full loss of flame, or using liquid accelerants, especially since I had only one fire total last year after a long hiatus due to the safety of the babies (now all age 4 and up). But in my defense, I do a fair bit of charcoal cooking outside in a classic 22" Weber kettle and we've been having more small "campfires" for s'mores in a separate metal patio firebowl (not a full stationary pit made from brick).
We all know that it is wise to store the instant coffee a long way away from the gravy powder (some of us discover this the hard way - student days .... ahhh!). It now looks like Wombat owners should make sure that the OXO cubes are always kept in their foil wrappers.
We all know that it is wise to store the instant coffee a long way away from the gravy powder (some of us discover this the hard way - student days .... ahhh!).
My parents once had a well-lubricated dinner party, and at the end of the meal one of the visitors volunteered to make Irish coffees. They looked really good...
My Dad said that the worst part was pouring all that whiskey & cream down the sink...
I went to help a fellow student repair his car at the Motor Club garage, which was located in an outbuilding of the Halls of Residence of the college. When we had dismantled it sufficiently, I drove him back to his rented flat in town. The next morning I went to pick him up, but he wasn't quite ready, so I offered to make a flask of coffee while he finished his breakfast. Back at the garage, and things were proceeding successfully, so we stopped about mid morning for a coffee break. I poured the coffee out of the flask into two plastic cups and handed him the first while I poured the second for myself. He took a huge gulp of coffee, turned bright red, and sprayed the coffee out of his mouth against the garage wall. Seems I had mistaken the contents of what I thought was the sugar pot, and had laced the flask with salt. That coffee stain was still on the garage wall several years later when I left the college.
Our dog used to poop roughly-cubical, extremely dense turds whenever he'd had bones to chew on. Since he was a fairly tall dog, they'd be released from a height of a foot or so, and would bounce in a satisfying manner when they hit the grass.
Needless to say, we began to refer to these artifacts as "dice", and many craps-related jokes ensued.
Miss that boy something fierce, we do.
These interesting critters have the curious properties of firstly no eye-shine under headlights, and a density approaching that of a collapsed star. It is possible to destroy a car hitting one only to have it waddle off into the undergrowth to die.
The damage they can do to a vehicle cannot be exaggerated. Additionally they have a funny practice of following the same path each day to the point of absurdity. I saw a property where an individual built a B&B on the edge of their farm, the wombat used to walk a path that was now obscured by the corner of a house. It dug under the corner rather than walk 4 feet to the right.
They are rather cute to watch in action, snuffling around and waddling along. Very fascinating.
These interesting critters have the curious properties of firstly no eye-shine under headlights, and a density approaching that of a collapsed star.
Research conducted by C. Rossetti notes that they are also obtuse and furry.
The damage they can do to a vehicle cannot be exaggerated.
It might well be worse if they were acute rather than obtuse.
It's nice to know Australia still produces something unique, which captures the attention of scientists in the U$...
I feel better now. Our PM just matched wits (careful how you spell that) with Pamela Anderson. He lost. He is also pretty sure to lose the next general election, but what is less certain, is how closely the two are related...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
