You take five different sponges, different species of sponge, put them all in the same liquidiser, blitz them all up, pour the resulting smoothie that you get into salt water, and in time they will separate themselves out into their original species, and you will get the sponges back again. Miraculous things. Isn't that clever?
It doesn't work with chihauhuas, I tried. Very unfortunate.
They are very absorbant, I had run out of field dressings and the guy had mulitple wounds, the female medic in my section was ahem experiencing that 'special time' and had some tampons. I utilised the available resources and the guy lived until we got him to the hospital