Sunday 17 October 2010

Tasmania - Part 2: an education in wombat poo


While out hiking in Tasmania, we were fortunate to witness two interesting feats of the Australian wildlife. The first was watching a baby wallaby maneuvering itself into its mother's pouch. As can be seen from the photos below it did not reverse in gracefully, but jumped in headfirst and then spent a few minutes scrambling around before eventually surfacing!







The second was the phenomenon of the wombat's square cubes of poo. Their poo is placed in positions to mark out their territory and is apparently 'produced' in perfect cubes to prevent it from rolling away!














3 comments:

  1. How do wombats do a square poo, do they fashion it after depositing it or is it another of natures phenomenons?

    Thanks for your postcard, it was a lovely surprise after a boring Monday in the City. Enjoy New Zealand.

    Mum xx

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  2. am thrilled to have wombat poo signposted and picked up by mark !!! this is a once in a lifetime trip (we hope) that you will tell your grandchildren about. x x mama p.s. like helen, i'd love to know how they do it.

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  3. It is apparently something to do with the layers of fibre in its diet. We just Googled "wombat square cubes of poo" to find out more and this blog came up in the top 10 hits. Not the sort of publicity we were after!

    Somebody did tell us that because wombats are built like brick-s**t it's only right that they lay bricks of . . .

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