Scott Carver writes: “I am passing along the latest iteration in the wombat cubed poo story – essentially moving from our previous work on how they make it, now to what they use it for. Enjoy.”
That new iteration, a research study, is: “Deriving the functional significance of olfaction in a solitary non‐territorial herbivore: The bare‐nosed wombat Vombatus ursinus,” K. McMahon, G.M. While, D.S. Nichols, A. Edwards, D.L. Hu, and S. Carver, Journal of Zoology, epub 2025. It says:
We undertook a multifaceted approach to assess evidence of scat-associated olfactory communication and create a foundation for further research in bare-nosed wombats, linking themes of capacity for signal reception, signal location in the environment and emission and signal response. First, cranial sections identified gross morphological features consistent with a vomeronasal organ, indicative of developed olfactory signal reception. Second, field surveys demonstrated that bare-nosed wombat latrines are associated with features in their landscape (particularly rocks, logs, and burrow entrances), which we hypothesize serve as a visual cue for locations where olfactory communication is concentrated. Third, gas-chromatography/mass-spectrometry on scats showed individually distinctive chemical signatures. Finally, using field experiments, we showed that introducing scats from unfamiliar bare-nosed wombats increased investigatory behaviors at manipulated latrines, and that these effects may depend on local recruitment and latrine density.
The Prize-Winning Wombat Poo Paper
In 2019 the Ig Nobel Physics Prize was awarded to Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu [who is also a co-author on the new, 2025 paper], for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.
- They documented that early research in two studies:
“How Do Wombats Make Cubed Poo?” Patricia J. Yang, Miles Chan, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, paper presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, Abstract: E19.0000, November 18–20, 2018 - “Intestines of Non-Uniform Stiffness Mold the Corners of Wombat Feces,” Patricia J. Yang, Alexander B. Lee, Miles Chan, Michael Kowalski, Kelly Qiu, Christopher Waid, Gabriel Cervantes Benjamin Magondu, Morgan Biagioni, Larry Vogelnest, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, Soft Matter, vol. 3, 2021
Bonus: Interview with Some of the Discoverers
Helen Shield of the ABC interviewed Scott Carver and Kate McMahon about the smelly-scat insight, with the headline: “Why do wombats do square poos and leave them lying around? It could be a message“