Wombats are a burrowing animal native to Australia perhaps best-known for being, well, pudgy—and quite cute. But there’s something you might not know about these adorable marsupials: Wombats are the only animals in the world that produce cube-shaped poop.

While this peculiarity has sparked much interest and debate, actual research into the intricacies of wombat scat has been scant. That’s left scientists largely in the dark about the phenomenon—until recently.

In 2018, Patricia Yang, a researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology who specializes in bodily fluids, started to look into the topic more closely after hearing about it at a conference.

“I didn't really believe it,” Yang says. But after confirming that it is, indeed, a