Guide
Wombat
The wombat is a stocky Australian burrowing herbivore, and it is world-famous for a genuinely strange trick: it produces cube-shaped droppings, the only known animal to do so.
Identifying the droppings
- Droppings are distinctly cubic — dry, firm blocks with flat sides, unlike the round or oval pellets of any other animal.
- They are dark, fibrous, and made of tightly compacted plant matter from a grass-and-root diet.
- Wombats place them on prominent spots — rocks, logs, and the tops of mounds — to scent-mark territory.
- The flat sides stop the cubes from rolling off their raised marking posts.
In the field
The cube shape is unique in the animal world and forms inside the wombat's very long, slow gut, which dries and moulds the droppings into blocks. Once you have seen the flat-sided cubes, no other droppings look like them.
The deliberate placement on raised objects is the second clue: a wombat wants its scent-marks visible and stable, and cubes conveniently stay put where round pellets would roll away.
Game facts
- Class
- Mammal
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Habitat
- Forest, Grassland
- Region
- Oceania
- Typical adult weight
- 26 kg
- Typical body length
- 1 m
- Activity
- Active by night
- Social pattern
- Mostly solitary
- Conservation
- Least concern
- Puzzle photos
- 3
In the game
Wombat is one of the game's most distinctive animals because its Oceania range and unmistakable body plan narrow the options fast.
Similar guesses
Rabbit Kangaroo Koala
Photo sources
Image credits are shown after each puzzle to avoid spoiling the answer.
- Wombat Faeces.jpgSojournerRL · CC0
- Wombat Poop Uncropped.jpgSojournerRL · CC0
- Certified Wombat Faeces.jpgBjørn Christian Tørrissen · CC BY-SA 3.0