Beneath the ground of Australia’s grasslands and eucalyptus forests stretch complex tunnels of wombat burrows, which can be 10 to 100 feet long and 11.5 feet deep. These burrows help wombats and other animals hide from predators, escape bushfires, and in some cases access water during times of drought. But the safety of the burrows also contributes to a new threat to the species: They may be helping spread a deadly disease called sarcoptic mange. To better understand that spread, researchers need to get inside the burrows; to do so, they’ve developed a robot called the WomBot.
Studying wombat burrows has long been a challenge for scientists, says Scott Carver, a disease ecologist at the University of Tasmania. They’re too small for adult humans to crawl into, so many researchers have had to use “destructive techniques,” such as digging up the burrows or drilling holes into them, or expensive ground-penetrating radar.
“The WomBot makes a big difference to studying burrows because it is nondestructive and can be used to study a much larger number more efficiently,” Carver says via email. Robert Ross, a robotics researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, spearheaded the development of the WomBot, and together with Carver and other researchers recently published a study on how they used the WomBot to explore 30 wombat burrows in Tasmania.
Though wombats are solitary, they switch their burrows every 4 to 10 days and end up sharing the space over time, Carver says, so the mites are transmitted via the burrows themselves. “The WomBot has been helping us understand how long the mites can survive in the burrows,” he says. “In winter this appears to be 15 to 16 days and in summer 4 to 6 days. This information can help us understand when efforts to treat wombats for mange are likely to have the greatest impact on reducing disease.”
In the future, the WomBot could do more than just explore the burrows—it could help reduce the spread of mange by delivering insecticide or heating the tunnels to get rid of the mites. Researchers are also working to improve the WomBot design so it can better handle the sharp turns or steep cliffs of wombat burrows, extending their ability to explore even farther. Says Carver: “There is so much more to learn about the underground world of wombats.”