The Fartonomicon

the Fartonomicon. We're going to be discussing not only the actual science of farts, but this this fascinating connection between demonology and flatulence. And I want to note by the way that the word fart predates flatulence and goes back at least to the fourteenth century. And of course the reality of human flatulence is is far older than humanity, of course it is, and it goes deep, deep into time,

just as demons seem to do. Uh So, Yeah, demonology does him to have a whole lot of farting in it. And this is one of the funny things, you know. When I was growing up, I was taught at church not to say cuss words, and cuss words included a lot of potty language and words for defecation and things like that. But if you go back into say the Renaissance or the medieval period before that, you will actually find a lot of pious holy men writing about theological

topics who are also quite potty mouthed. Yes that they have their head. They have their head both in the heavens and in the toilet at the same time. Yes, well, that connection between heaven and the toilet is something we'll discuss here. You know, one of my my favorite accounts, and this, of course, is a medieval account from one of the great works of medieval literature, and particularly Italian medieval literature, uh, Dante's Inferno, of course. Uh. To refresh everyone,

of course. In in Dante's Inferno, Dante himself is guided by the deceased poet Virgil through hell, through the underworld in a journey that will eventually take him back up to Paradise. Now, I love the Inferno, but I honestly did not remember the farting segments. Oh man, the Inferno. So Robert, you're gonna you're gonna have to illuminate me,

educate me on the farting. All right, well, I'm gonna set the stage here here we have our duo venturing into the Mala Boga the as a region of the hell with all these uh, these these pits, these boulders in which various tortures are taking place and roaming about are the Malibranchia, the the evil clause. This is a group of demons that are patrolling about and you know, torturing uh as part of their job. And they all have fabulous names like Scarmiglion, which means troublemaker, and Malacotah,

which means evil tail. And he's apparently the leader of the group. So I'm gonna read just a bit here from this encounter. Oh me, what is it, master, that I see pray? Let us go? I said, without an escort, If thou knowest how since for myself I asked none. If thou art as observant as thy want is, dost thou not see that they do nash their teeth and

with their brows are threatening woe to us. And he to me quote, I will not have the fear let them nash on according to their fancy, because they do it for those boiling wretches Along the left hand dike. They wheeled about, but first had each one thrust his tongue between his teeth toward their leader for a signal, and he had made a trumpet of his rump. Trumpet of his rump. That is like the ultimate hell signal.

Now we see that kind of blasphemous behavior also in the Monty Python animations, you know, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there's a scene depicting like cartoon versions of the heavens, and it definitely includes people playing musical instruments with their butts. And then, of course I can't help but think of the French insult uh I fart

in your general direction. Oh yeah, there's that too. The funny thing about about this uh trumpet of his rump business is that scholars have actually argued for more than a century. It seems like the last century has really been the period in which this has been a matter of scholarly debate over whether this is supposed to be funny or not. Why would it not be funny? I know, I mean I vaguely remember my college Dante professor thinking it was funny and generally enjoying the the humor that

is to be found throughout Inferno. Especially, things get less funny as you get up to towards the paradise. But there there are plenty of moments that I think we can legitimately say are funny within Inferno. Yeah. Well, I mean it's it's definitely there. In the same time that Dante is uh depicting and sometimes very lavish and excruciating detail the terrors and tortures of Hell, he sometimes also seems to be sort of satirizing the foibles of humanity. Yeah,

and skewering his personal enemies. Yeah. Yes. So for instance, those demon names that I mentioned earlier, Alex Scarmiglian, Apparently these these names are plays upon various family names that that Dante took issue with as well. Right now, in general, we should add there there's a lot of butt action when it comes to Christian demonology. Lots of demons speak from their butts. Uh. They seal packs with their butts, and of course they're all about doing things too human

butts in hell depending on the depictions. Uh, and you can have a field day teasing apart all of the various elements wound up in this sort of butt centric myth making. Folks, if you haven't already figured it out, this episode is gonna be heavy with a lot of like butts and flatulence. So if you're not interested, uh, you may be warned to tune out now because it will continue, Yes, it will. It will not stop until

we reach the end. Uh. So another thing I should point out this idea that you know, this link between demons and flatuents. There is this idea that you see where demons use flat uns against the faithful. I did run across this account of fourth century Christian monk I vag Risks of Pontus warning that demons may bloat the faithful with flatulence to distract them from religious observation. That is an insidious tactic. Did that go in the screwtape letters?

That's that's smart it should have. Incidentally, I did run across a contemporary ride up where I think the the author was arguing for the demonic powers of yoga and how it was. It was one of these wonderful accounts where the like, yes, I too have been to a yoga class, and I thought it's connections to to a non Christian religion was was harmless. And then they talk about some of the the signs that you may have demonic spirit annual in. One of them is flatments. Really, yes, really, yes.

It is kind of odd to see in the modern day people associating an evil spirit or kind of a I don't know. I feel like generally the idea of an evil spirit has been more abstracted these days, But it is very true if you go back into history, there's a very physical kind of quality to it that it that it is embodied by bad smells and bad

physical forces and excrement and things like that. Yeah. And yet still you have to realize that all of these individuals, uh, they experienced flatulence as just a regular aspect of their lives and everyday reality of their biology. Yeah. If this guy gets flatulence in church, is that also a demon possessing him? Yeah? I mean, let's let's not be silly about it, like that those those guys are gonna fart in church. It's just going to happen, no matter how holy the monk, Uh, there is going to be a

bit of a flat us in play. Now. It's obvious that many people in the Middle Ages, and lots of people involved in creating Christian theology and mythology have been interested in the idea of flatulence and the role that plays in demonology. But sometimes it goes beyond the demonology. I mentioned earlier that that some of these theologians really

do seem to have their head in the toilet. And who I mainly had in mind was Martin Luther, because I know Martin Luther loved some potty humor jokes, and he he was he had a he had a wicked, witty pin and he would fling just powerful volleys of scatological,

excoriating invective against his enemies. Yeah, they're a number of different, uh Martin Luther quotes that use scatological references, probably with the most famous one is quote but I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. That's great because so it's not just a rebuke, but it's also like a an implied diminishment of the power of the devil. Right, It's like, I don't need powerful spiritual forces or strong weapons or anything like that

to chase the devil away. I dismissed the devil. Yeah, it's not just merely a get behind me satan um. It's get behind me satan. Now here comes a tuot. And of course there are other examples of this as well. I was looking at a book titled luther Man Between God and the Devil by he ik A Oberman, who points out that Luther often used poopy language against the Devil and his work. So here are just a few examples. Uh, and and Joe, maybe you can you can read these

with me. Uh. Here's one. But if that is not enough for you, you devil, I also have and wipe your mouth on that and take a hearty bite o ruh. Okay, we got another one here. A slanderer does nothing but ruminate the filth of others with his own teeth and wallow like a pig with his nose in the dirt. That is also why his dropping stink most surpassed only by the devil's. And though man drops his excrements in private,

the slanderer does not respect this privacy. He gluts on the pleasure of wallowing in it, and he does not deserve better according to God's righteous judgment. When the slanderer whispers, look how he has on himself, the best answer is you go eat it. He's almost there's almost like a childish glee. It is that is that is present in these quotes. Yes, and of course Luther being the author of the Christian Reformation, you know, the birth of Protestantism. Luther,

of course, had a lot of farty invective for the pope. Quote, I will give a fart for a staff you Satan, Antichrist or pope can lean on it a stinking nothing man. This is making me think I would not want to make enemies with Martin Luther. Yeah, I mean, he's going to really let you have it, maybe physically. Now, all of this makes me think that you could actually write a whole book on the cultural significance of farting in

Middle Age Europe. You could, And in fact, Valerie Allen did just that, Yeah, in her book on Farting, Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages, published in two thousand seven. And Uh, this is just this is a rich tone. This is truly a part anomicon, uh in its own right. So I just wanted to pull a few choice tidbits

from the text. So she she, for instance, mentions uh the fourteenth century Icelandic tale of uh poor Stein's pattern Skulks, in which a demon arises from the depths of a twenty two seat toilet to confront our hero whoa So is it like the number of seats is proportional to the depths of degradation that the toilet embodies. I guess, so you know, because I'm guessing that those twenty two seats share a common pit of foulness, and it's it takes.

It's that sort of foulness from which the demon must arise. She also notes that late medieval art often depicts demons is covered in fecal matter, as well as the mystery plays of the time. So an example of this from Alan, she says that in the drama The Fall of Lucifer, as Lucifer quote thuds to his stinking sty, he wails for fear of fire, I crack a fart, and then in the Fall of Man you have this character Diabolos, and he cries out, and this is of course the translation.

On account of this fall, I am starting to quake with a art my britches I break, which again is just kind of another almost like grade school poopy insult or parody leveled at at the devil. It has some of the wit of the couplets you see in like Dryden and Alexander Pope. Yea more like Alexander poop, though I'm alright, um, so I want to share one more quote from Valerie Allen because she she sums up a lot of this very nicely, and and she says the

following quote. If in the popular theatrical imagination, Satan's descent to bottomless perdition is punctuated by flatulence, it is a natural consequence to picture him as the load that Heaven discharges into Hell the show of the Cosmos. I I just love that because it does it just sums up so much of this this energy and inner interconnectedness between bodily movements and flatulence and these demonic entities and just

the overall like theological structure of the universe. Christian cosmology reduced to us your everyday bowel movement on the potty. And of course, the Christian tradition is not the only tradition to to play with flash lens, not at all. So yeah, we will leave the Christian tradition for a moment and look at the fact that fart humor goes way back and covers pretty much the entire world. There are fart jokes everywhere, and they go deep into history.

There's actually a writer and academic named Paul McDonald who he teaches at the University of Wolverhampton and he was involved in this list that came out a few years back. That was where they were trying to find the oldest jokes known in history, and it turned out that, according to this University of Wolverhampton list, the oldest known joke at the time was a fart joke. It is a fart joke from ancient Mesopotamia. It's a Sumerian joke that traces back to about nineteen d BC e, making it

almost four thousand years old. And it reads in translation as the following quote, something which has never occurred since time immemorial. A young woman did not fart in her husband's lap. Okay. I think maybe like the the particulars of the joke don't don't carry well across you know, more than four millennia. But it does seem to, yeah, it's lost something in in translation, maybe language wise and definitely culturally. I don't know if this is topical humor

for the time. Is it like there was a big problem with I don't know, dudes getting married and then their wife farting in their lap. I don't know, but that's what it seems to suggest it's like everybody will be like, oh, yeah, that always happens. Uh. It's sort of a mandatory contemplation here. Do you think that the presence of an ancient fart joke like this supports uh, the idea of of the camera a mind Julian James's theory? Or is it? Or is it? Or is this uh?

Or is this some some ammunition one could use against it? I don't know. I guess i'd say it's neutral. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't say supports okay, But but I do wonder what would one, given the particulars of of the bicameral theory, would would one have to be conscious as a modern human is conscious in order to make a fart joke like this? That's a good question. I don't know how humor would play into the presence of consciousness. Yeah.

I will say though that I love Julian James's theory, and I would I would hate it if it were an ancient fart joke that truly brought it down, like this was the this was the arrow that managed to to kill the beast. That's the nail in the coffin. It's a fart joke, Yeah, sorry, James could be well, I say, we look elsewhere for more fart jokes in history. One of the best that I have come across is actually not a verbal joke, but it is a series

of amazing illustration sans from medieval Japanese art. So, Robert, have you seen these medieval Japanese fart scrolls? I had not until you showed them to me this morning. I mean, I've seen so many different bits of Japanese art that depict basically just all sorts of body horror, be they in the form of yokai or other monster stories, or or even just like the magical testicle based ability of

the raccoon dogs. So in Edo period Japan, which is the early seventeenth to mid nineteenth century, some artists or group of artists created a collection of artworks that have now been digitized and you can find them at the website of Waseda University Library. And these artworks are contained on a scroll known as hay Gassin or Fart Battle, and the name says it all. You've got dudes blasting each other with farts in every way you can imagine,

but not just any farts. These are kind of a supernatural high powered fart that appears to have the power to knock people over and do all kinds of damage. It's represented in the artwork as a kind of spreading beam of darkness that comes out of the butt. And so it's you've got dudes farting and enemies while riding on horseback. You've got dudes farting through holes in the walls.

You've got farting on cats, I don't know why, sometimes farting at cats and the cats are like And then you've got people farting into bags and then releasing the bags on rivals and then repelling farts with handheld fans. That's pretty smart, like Mortal Kombat. Yeah, right there, all kinds of havoc and destruction. And this particular scroll actually appears to be part of a larger tradition of fart

battle artworks. I found one academic article discussing medieval Japanese fart battles in art, and it was by Akiko Yano.

The article was called Historiography of the Fallic Contest hand scroll in Japanese Art in the Japan Review, and Yano describes one art scroll housed at the Mitsui Memorial Museum in to Kio, which is known as catchier a maki, and it's a hand scroll that contains both the phallic contest component that was in the title of the paper, which is a competition quote among men with surrealistically huge male members, and then it's also got a fart battle component.

And in the fart battle section, the only text is a few brief descriptions of what is happening in some of the artworks. Examples of the explanatory text include quote, they prepare to fart like arrows by drinking cold water to chill their bellies, picking sweet acorns and eating them with raw chestnuts. Their stomachs are chilled. Now they line up to fart like arrows by eating hot rice porridge. Okay, now this lines up with some of the science will

be discussing later. Yes, And finally they collect the farts in a bag and prepare to volley fart arrows. Fart arrows, fart arrows. All right. I really like the way that's written, as if it's like you should already know what a fart arrow is. But yeah. Another interesting thing Yano points out in the article is that many of the figures depicted in these artworks releasing these huge sort of fart Hadukins are supposed to be priests. They're dressed as priests,

so you have to wonder. It's like, is there a satirical aspect to this? Yeah, I mean we see this in East and West, right, this idea perhaps that you know, no matter how holy this particular holy man or woman may seem, we all know that they fart, and we can imagine it, and sometimes, if we're lucky, we can hear it, and it's it serves to sort of knock them down a peg, at least in our minds. Okay, I got one more good one, Robert, did you did you know previously about Roland the Farter? I had not

heard of Roland the Farter. No, do tell of Roland the Farther. Well, there's a really great Warren Zevon song about him. I'm getting confused for something else, roll on the head of Thompson Gunner. Yeah. So there is a section on good old Roland in the book A Social History of England nine to twelve hundred, edited by Julia Crick and Elizabeth van Houts, and this is discussing what went on in the court of the English King Henry the Second, who ruled in the middle of the twelfth century.

So I'm going to read this quote quote at the royal court, Christmas was evidently a time for special entertainments, as suggested by the records of one Roland le Patur, also called rue Landas Lefarterre, who was granted a sergeanty, apparently of the late twelfth century. And aside, note, a sergeanty was part of the feudal system, where a person would be awarded control of a feudal estate in exchange for some non standard service rendered. So basically it was

kind of like a feudal knighthood. You'd be given a grant of land, except instead of being a night in service of the King of the queen, you would do some kind of other service. But going back to the quote, his grant is typical of that given to favored entertainers as well as to others of service to the king. In his case, it included the requirement of performing saltum, siffletum petum, or a jump, a whistle a fart before

the king on Christmas Day. The phrase was a stock expression and seems to represent standard buffoonery, the kind of thing that would constitute a jester's performance, and so it is likely that Roland the Farter was a royal jester and the fart was his stock in trade. I wonder if these were legitimate farts or were these like sort of clown based farts. Did he have some sort of cushioned devices at a poem in the armpit kind of thing? Yeah, I would tend to suggest they wouldn't settle for anything

less than the real thing. Isn't that interesting because you can in the same way that you know, we have these these festivals in which the fool has made king for for a day, you know, everything is the reverse for the For the jester in the in the actual king's court, to fart in the king's presence, Uh, could be a extreme embarrassment. It could It could diminish your standing in the royal court. And yet the opposite is

true for the jester. What it would if he has called upon to to do his performance and he has no flatuss upon which to call it? Could that could be disaster? That could could cause his head to be separated from his body. Yeah. I can't remember the details,

but you've just called to mind a story. I think I recall about some lord or some some noble dignitary whoever, who was appearing before Queen Elizabeth the First and who I've heard this one farted in her presence and it was so embarrassing that he essentially had to leave the country or at least disappeared to somewhere somewhere far away for a while, but then came back. Is the version of the story that he came back years later and it presented himself before the Queen and she said, I

remember you. You're the boy who farted again again if it was, and it's your whole identity. Yeah, that's like a I think that's a human fear like that if if if you let one rip in the wrong context, Uh, that fart will haunt you forever for no good reason, because again everyone does this, This is a basic aspect of of human behavior. Well, unfortunately, that is exactly the route that the role in the farter story goes down, So it has a kind of sad ending. According to

stories collected. Actually, oh you know what, I just realized in a book that's the same Valerie Allan book you mentioned earlier. Yeah, so in that same Valerie Allen book, apparently she She talks about how a later king, probably Henry the Third, took the crown, and the story goes that the laughs dried up and this king did not find Roland's act very funny, and he revoked Roland's grant of land, citing the fact that his buffoonery was indecent.

But Alan also notes that some things about the timeline don't really add up. These chronicles would have role in the Farter having a career that was like a hundred and twenty years long or more so. Something about the story is probably garbled or wrong, but there does appear to be some kind of historical core to it. We do think there was a role in the farter who

farted for his bread and butter. Huh, Well, I wonder if it This is near speculation on my part, but I wonder if it could have been more of a role. It's kind of like Bozo the clown, or you could have different actors playing Roland the Farter, and therefore he could live for the doctor. Yeah, yeah, you know, every time the doctor disappears, you have a new role in the Farter time Lord shows up. Yeah, the basic that basic transformation scene, except with farting sounds at it. Get

on at Hollywood. I want to see the Roland Roland at the farther chronicles. All right, I think we should take a quick break and when we come back we will look at the science of flatulence. Than alright, we're back. So what exactly is flatulence? Tell me, Robert, Well, when you you boil it down to just the basics, it's gas produced during digestion and flatus. Only A applies to gas expelled through the anus, So not the cloaco or a specialized glander duck. We're talking about gas from your

anus or the anus of any anally empowered animal. Because, of course, as we do. We discussed on our our anus episode, which I'll link to on the Landing page for this episode stuff to blow your mind dot com. There's always more, Yeah, there's there's always more content out there. But as we mentioned in that, uh, not every creature has an anus. Now that being said, it should also be noted that not every animal farts, and we will get back to that truth as well. But let's talk

about the composition of the average two. Yeah, so how much does the average person far it? Alright, so, sure people out there are wondering like am I am I farting too much? Not enough? I've got to know, uh yeah, And you know, it is one of those things that's probably difficult for most people to gauge because it's depending on, like I guess your what kind of household you grew up in, and what sort of culture you're a part of. Uh. Sometimes farting is something that must be done in secret

uh and blamed upon children and animals. But apparently the average person uh, let's rip between five hundred and two thousand million leaders of gas per day and each about is likely to be thirty five to ninety million leaders. Okay, I just did some extremely rough math on that, and it looks like that would average out to about twenty farts a day on average if you go for the middle of those ranges. All right, Well, I would be curious to hear from listeners who want to uh speak

truth to that number. Does that line up with your experience? What do you think? Uh? Incidentally, I also have run across um uh some material in the past that spoke to at least in uh in some cultures and maybe all cultures. I don't know, but the you're gonna have different volumes with with men and women depending on is it is it seem more proper for men to regularly pass gas versus women, and therefore women might um contain

themselves more more than the men. I'm not sure how that research actually lines up with our figures here, though. Is there fart injustice being done? Yeah? I mean again, we come back to the basic reality that this is

something that everybody's body does. So, according to Jeffrey Klueger, writing for Discover magazine and nineteen and fabulous article in which is primary source is gastro inturologists and two thousand thirteen Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt, who will keep coming back to because Levitt is a big name in the fart science community. Yes. Uh, but according to this article of Flatus, is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane.

I read somewhere that among some people tested, the nitrogen seemed to be the greatest component by volume. Okay, and these are all either swallowed in or with the food or released during digestion. Now this is all odorless is the interesting part to consider here? Uh. In the methane, the remaining one percent of the composition is to blame for the smell, and it's the byproduct of the microbe legions that live in your gut aiding in your digestion.

That one percent is their waste gas. So yeah, what exactly are these odor carrying compounds? And by god, there's a study on that. So this is a study by Suarez, Springfield and Love at the same Levet we mentioned earlier called identification of Gases responsible for the odor of hum inflate us and Evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odor, published in Gut And so I've not heard of the journal Gut before. That's great. Yeah, all your

gut needs met in one place. So they took sixteen healthy subjects and fed them pinto beans and stool softener and hooked them up to quote rectal tubes. Getting off to a good start. So results results were that most but not quite all of the malodorous calm pounds and human flatus where sulfur based compounds, and the following where the major sulfur compounds detected yet hydrogen sulfide, which has a rotten eggs smell, and it's associated with the microbial

breakdown of organic matter in an oxygen free environment. So if you've ever had that really bad microbial decomposition smell, it's often coming from some kind of anaerobic source. It's breakdown occurring where there's no oxygen in the breakdown area,

and it's it's producing these horrible sulfurous by products. And this was followed by methane thiol, which is sometimes described as the smell of rotten cabbage, and it's a major component of bad breath, and then also by dimethyl sulfide, which has a strong bad smell, also sometimes described as cabbage like. In fact, I've read that it's produced when

you boil cabbage. So part of the bad smell of boiled cabbage is going to be this stuff dimethyl sulfide, but it's also in lower concentration when paired with other smells. One of the major components of the smell we identify as the smell of the ocean, which is funny because when you think about the smell of the sea, it's one of those that that's kind of sitting on the fence between a good smell and a bad smell, right right, And it's kind by context really exactly, it's kind of nice,

but it can also get kind of kind of foul. Yeah, I guess it's when you're actually at the ocean. You know that you have you have all the other sensory information to to skew it into a more positive place and in a definite uh oceanic vibe. It's kind of like the whole like like cheese versus smelly shoes or smelly socks situation where oftentimes that you're essentially talking about a very similar odor, but when associated with the shoes

it is gross. But when associated with a particular cheese, if you are a cheese eater, then it will excite you. I think that's a good point of comparison. Now, so the human judges in judging the malodorous nous of different farts, they apparently were able to significantly correlate the worst smelling farts with hydrogen sulfide concentration. So it seems like the more hydrogen sulfide is in the flate US, the worse

it smells. Now, as a side note, the study also looked at a couple of methods for eliminating the odor of flate US quote. Odor intensity was also determined after treatment of FLATEUS samples with zinc acetate which binds sulfidril compounds hydrogen sulfide and methane thiol or activated charcoal utilizing

gas type milar pantaloons. Yes, gas type milar pantaloons. The ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulfur containing gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed, and what they found was the activated charcoal anus cushion worked best and it adsorbed more than of the sulfur based gases. So if you want your farts to not stink, you can use an activated charcoal anus cushion and it

will apparently work pretty darn well. How come that's not a standard feature in these, uh, these various underwears that one can order online these days. I think maybe there actually is underwear you can get like that. I don't know if it uses activated charcoal, but there are I've seen advertisements for underwear that is supposed to get rid of the bad smell of farts, and I don't know how effective it is or what it's made out of, but I know I've seen that before. Interesting, Now, Robert,

here's a question I've got. I know people are very often prone to link the prevalence of farts and the bad smell of farts to certain elements in the diet. But when people talk about this, it sounds completely random to me. It sounds like they're just making up one thing or another because there's no consistency whatsoever, and what people say leads to lots of farts or bad smelling farts,

except maybe beans. Well, and then here's the thing to write anything that you any particular food you associate with a fart to speak of it. Uh. Thus lee is humorous, so that if you were to say, oh, man, someone's got the tutsie roll toots today, or I have a bad case of the beef farts, huh uh yeah, it's it actually gets funnier. I think the more mundane the food you say, is like, oh, you know, Terry's got bread farts over here. Yeah, there's there's nothing that isn't funny.

But as it turns out, there there is a science to what's going on here, and we can classify our foods into different toot categories. The more complex the carbohydrates in your diet, the more pungent the odor is likely to be. Yeah, so meat, fish, nuts, and berries not too much to worry about citrus, bread and potatoes. Those are full of complex sugars. Uh, So you get a two tier consistency. And then the beans, bananas and milk foods such as this. That's where you really in your

fart city. And this is because the more complex carbohydrates are more difficult to break down, requiring more work in the lower regions of the bowels. In general, however, it's not only the creature's diet that's gonna be a major factor, but also the specific gut floor that they have, the specific uh you know, microbes that are residing within them to aid in their digestion. But and then also overall

health of the individual. So these are gonna character These are gonna influence not only the character but the volume of the toots and high fiber diets. They have a lot of veggies in them. For instance, these have been linked to increased flash lens as well as have dairy starch and fructose. That's interesting. I mean, not knowing anything going in, I might have assumed, Hey, who's gonna fart the most, don't I don't know, Maybe people who eat

a lot of meat. No, it's the it's the curse of the vegetarian, but but also Brussels sprouts and meat are also examples of foods with high concentrations of sulfur leading to the production of that hydrogen sulfide that we've mentioned already, the smell of rotten eggs, but also hey, the smell of fire and brimstone. Oh, that brings us right back to the demonic associate. Yes, I wonder, I

wonder now speaking of fire and brimstone. Mary Wroach actually breaks down the flammable components of platus in her excellent book Gulp Adventures in the Alimentary Canal. Uh. This is this is a fabulous book I've mentioned on the show before. Uh and and Mary does a fabulous job exploring fart science and at least two different books that she's written. So here's some of the facts. Methane and hydrogen are explosive in concentrations higher than four to five percent, and

then up to eight of plates is hydrogen. That's interesting. I wonder how that compares to what I read that a major component is nitrogen. I guess maybe it's got to be highly variable, right, I imagine. So, now we've all heard tales of lighted farts and if you're like me. You might have seen it done on stage that at an Atlanta improv show. Do not take that as an

endorsement of this behavior. This podcast is not recommending lighting fart, which is actually seriously dangerous behavior, right and you and you will see why it's dangerous as we roll out some of the details. Um but but Roache does describe a few of the more harrowing cases of flate is fire, such as the fatal N seven mishap during a colonic polypectomy, that is, the surgical removal of polyps from the colon. Wow,

how did this happen? So the gastro intrologist here was using electrocoagulation to cut to cut down on bleeding, and about eight seconds into the procedure there was an explosion. The patient's body jerked on the table. Uh, and then the the colonoscope was quote completely ejected from the body, which Mary interprets is essentially it was launched out of

the anus by the explosion. It is horrifying. Yeah, but basically what happened is that there is there the gas in the colon was flammable, and the the the electro cauterization device touched it off and bamo. This is why Roach says there's so much overkill in pre colonoscopy bowel cleansing. The patient in this case had followed the pre surgical instructions. He'd taken the laxative manitol to clear everything out. But but while there was no fecal matter inside of him,

there was gas. Now important note here manitol is not used anymore. So Mary Road churches everyone not to worry about exploding during the colonoscopy. Uh and she She also points out that doctors will blow air or carbon dioxide, which is non flammable, into the colon as they work. Quote. Inflating the colon also helps them see what they're doing. Air creates the magnificent billowing flatulence that rings through the

colonoscopy recovery room. I've never considered that. Apparently it's the thing. If only the Fart Battle illustrators had known, I know, it would be a much more fiery affair right unexplored territory here. So some of you might be wondering, well, heck, if there is a lethal amount of gas in my colon right now, should I be afraid? Should I? Should I step away from campfires? Etcetera. And uh, Roach says,

don't worry. Basically, so the hydrogen and methane dilutes as you pass gas, so basically as it comes out into the atmosphere, very quickly disperses and enters a concentration. That's not dangerous. That's right. Too light of fart. And again we do not encourage you to do so, you'd have to hold the match. So the flame made contact with the gas the second it left the body, too close for comfort. In other words, I feel like the commercial

like showing people skateboarding, do not attempt, do not attempt. Yeah, we can't drive that home enough here. Oh, and I have to mention this this section from from from the book Gulp as well, because Roach chats with University of Alabama's Stephen Secor. Uh. If you look him up, he's almost always draped in a which is which is an encouraging sign of a biologist. And Secor has this interesting theory regarding the myth of the of the fire breathing dragon.

So imagine this, imagine us, Uh, the sort of gas a large snake would generate. Snakes do fart? Yeah, like yeah, that they do. And and so this would be like a python or a constrictor. Right now, imagine in that inside that snake of a vegetation gorged mammal that is also decomposing. Okay, so like snake eats a ruminant herbivore, right, that's that it that itself had just previously eaten a

whole bunch of grass. Now, bear in mind that many plant eaters lacking rumans, have a seasome as a pouch between the small intestines and the colon, and animals like rabbits have extra large ones. And the interesting thing is that pythons and boas do as well, not for the plants they're not eating, but for the plant eaters their gobbling, gobbling down whole. So that's quite a lot of methane building up in there. So imagine some prehistoric hunters dragging

a gorge snake homeb to the campfire. You know, something that's just thick with its recent meal, some sort of whole large herbivore just lodged in its gut being broken down. So the hunters dragged this back to the campfire and they PLoP it down in front of the fire hard enough to blast the creature's mouth open, and then this brilliant burst of flame. I will say that as a highly contrived scenario, but I like it nonetheless. Yeah, it's

it's it's beautiful in its own way. Now I mentioned that Mary Roach has more than one book that explores the science of flatus. Uh. The other is Packing for Mars, which is because this actually matters in space. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a big it's a big deal. Um. She She explores the threat of of NASA fart studies in a couple of her books, and these are just

a couple of the choice nuggets. Here she mentions that Edwin Murphy researched unquote experimental bean meal h fed to volunteers who had been rigged via erectal catheter to out gas into a measurement device. Yea, he was interested in individual differences, not just in the overall volume of flate us, but in the differing percentages of the gases, and owing to differences in intestinal bacteria, half the population produced no methane. No methane, Yeah, no methane. And this so this would

make them attractive as astronauts. But I can also see this can make them a target of chauvinistic attitudes about how real farts contain methane. True, but Murphy even reported that he had found an individual who was flate as free. So here's a quote. I don't believe that you, Oh, well, I don't know. It's it's it's a tough pill to swallow. But here's the quote of special of special interest for further research was the subject who produced essentially no flateus

on one hundred grams dry weight of beans. So he suggested that the astronauts be selected from quote that part of our population producing little or no methane or hydrogen. Now, also, it's it's worth noting that NASA used to keep our flatest expert and again future Nobel Prize winner biophysicist Michael Levitt on retainer as a consultant, and he ruled that the capsules uh that they were using at the time were large enough and and well circulated enough to prevent

the dangerous concentrations of gas from building up. God, can you imagine that being the requirement? Though? That shut you down to become an astronaut. So it's like you've ever since your little kid, you've trained, you've worked hard in school, you've worked hard to stay fit. You you're ready to go to space. You're in perfect shape, you know all the astrophysics, you've been a test pilot, god knows what else,

and you're ready to be an astronaut. And they put a rectal tube in you and they say, I'm sorry, you produced too much late us. You can't go to Mars. Yeah. It's like you're super qualified, but your farts are weird.

I'm sorry now, you know. In the past, we've we've talked about the prospect of genetically engineering astronauts, and of course the main objectives here would be, uh, you know, to to make them more resistant to uh, solar and cosmic radiation, or or make them resistant to micro gravity bone loss. But perhaps we also want to ensure a fart free space faring human uh, either via genetic changed in the individual or manipulation or genetic engineering of gut

flora itself. Oh, yeah, that that could be a thing. I mean, I wonder if one way to do that would be not so much through genetic engineering from birth, but through say like fecal transplants, Yeah, to change the gut flora profile. Yeah, I mean really, there's there's so much left to learn about the the connection between our gut flora, uh, and other aspects of our health, not

only physical health, but even mental health. I believe we've talked about this on the show before, the idea that in the future, one of the treatments for certain cases of say, depression, might be treatable via something like a

fecal transplant. Yes, some of the amazing implications of gut flora for all kinds of body health up and down the line are discussed in that great book I recommended a couple of years ago, Ed Young's I Contain Multitudes, which is all about the It's about microbes and the microbiome, and it's just fascinating. I mean, the dimensions of ramifications posed by gut flora within humans specifically, but microbes all

around us generally are are just unbelievable. Alright, Well, on that note, we're going to take another break, and when we come back, we're going to discuss some of the notable toots of the Animal Kingdom. Thank thank Alright, we're back now, Robert. There is a book that I know you have been super psyched about ever since we got a copy. Yes, uh, and I've actually just in the past couple of days we decided to do this episode first, But since then I've noticed in the past couple of

days on the Internet other people are catching onto this book. Yes, it's making a buzz, that's right. The name of the book is Does It Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence by Nick Caruso and Danny Rabbiotti, illustrated by Ethan co Chak. It's uh, it's been a bit of a hit in my household thus far as you can. This is one of those books that you can just flip through it land on any particular page and there'll be a profile of a specific animal. It's it's very

easily digestible, Yes, very easily digestible. It has some just delightful illustrations. Uh. And I've been reading sections of it to my wife, to my five year old son, to myself, and it's it's tremendous fun. So I highly recommend getting a copy of this. I'll make or there's a link to it on the landing page for this episode is stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. Well, let's talk about a few examples, all right. Well first, uh, yeah,

a few examples of just exceptional tutors in the animal Kingdom. Uh. The first one I want to profile here is that the West Indian manateee. I was really impressed with this one because we've discussed manatees a couple of times on the podcast this year, and I've I've recently got to see some both in the wild and and in an aquarium setting, but I had not heard this particular tidbit. The authors point out that quote, the manatees and testines

have small pouches throughout that allow for gas storage. This unusual anatomy allows the West Indian manateee to manipulate its farts as a mechanism for buoyancy. By storing gas within specific areas of their intestines, manatees can make their bodies more buoyant and float towards the surface, while the compression and release of flatulence makes these animals sink. Amazing. Yeah, so they're they're it's it's almost like they're these these

fart powered blimps flying through the ocean. Uh. And they point out that in fact, if if a manity is constipated, it screws everything up and will often float with their tail too high because there's too much gas built up there. Throws off the blancy. You know, I was flipping through this morning and I found a section on iguanas, and so I was that that intrigued me Iguanas. Sometimes they've got this look in their face like I don't fart,

look a little proud. Yeah. Yeah, but they're they're lying. They're lying to you, because iguanas do fart, like geckos and other lizards, they fart. The Rhinoceros iguana or Cyclora cornuda, they apparently tend to produce quote wet sounding farts, uh, and they fart more when they have high fiber diets

that makes sense, or lots of parasitic infestation. Green iguanas, which are popular pets, are herbivorous, which means more farts, and iguana owners have actually commented pretty often that their lizards produce loud fart steering defecation. One that I found interesting was the termite. You don't they might not think about farting termites, but here's the thing. They're kind of super farters and according to the authors here, they produced

five to nineteen percent of global methane emissions. Yeah, is that possible? Or point to seven percent of greenhouse emissions. Termites, Yeah, amazing. Yeah, just in there, munch in wood and tuting. Now they also get into dinosaurs a little bit, specifically talking about sauropods. So as we'll discuss, birds do not fart, so it's possible that they're dino ancestors did not either. But sara pods, however, these are the you know, the gigantic uh plant eating

engines of of prehistoric times. They likely depended on hindgut fermentation to break down those massive meals, resulting in quite a bit of gas. The author's point to one studies estimate of one point nine kilograms of methane per sauropod per day. Now, speaking of methane producing herbivores, I think we should look at the cow. There's actually a section on the cow in this book, but I also did some extra research on the cow because obviously the cow farts.

But you might be surprised to find out how because you might have heard that, for example, cows are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and whether that's true defend, depends on how you define major. But it is true that methane and other gas emissions do contribute to climate change. There was a report produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and it estimated that in two thousand eleven, methane emissions from livestock accounted for thirty nine percent of

all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Now that's from agriculture, not thirty nine of total emissions from all sources. And just to put that in context, according to an analysis by the U s d a UH, they estimated that agricultu sure accounts for about ten percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, So that'd bet of ten percent. And among that thirty nine percent of agricultural emissions produced by livestock,

a full seventy four percent came from cattle. There was from beef cattle, and nineteen percent from dairy cattle, and the rest were from things like buffalo and sheep and goats. Now, a lot of this gas production comes down to the cows herbivorous diet and digestion method which Caruso and Rabbiati say can produce between a hundred and two hundreds of methane emissions per cow per year. And when you're measuring in kilograms, you're you're thinking about a gas, So it's

like that much gas weighing that much. It's kind of hard to fathom. But you might have often heard this idea or this line of thinking summarized as, Wow, cow farts are really contributing to climate change. Although cows do fart, the majority of their emissions comes here's the kicker, not from farts, but through the other end of the cow, straight out the mouth. So cows expel a great deal of methane through burps and through simple exhalation when they

were when they're breathing. And some researchers think cow emissions can be curbed by altering their diet in targeted ways, such as like feeding them different types of seaweed that inhibit the production of gut methane. But they've got this ruminant digestion method right, and so they end up just spitting out a lot of carbon dioxide, methane and greenhouse

gasses from the mouth. Well, you know that leads in nicely to the first of a few notable abstainers we're going to mention here from the book, Does it fart? You mean animals that do not fart? Yeah, or may not fart in some cases that the science is still out. But the first is the sloth. So sloth, I don't believe it. Slots must fart. You just look into their sort of lazy eyes and you just assume that there's some farts going on. My ignorant intuition trumps any science

on this matter. I know sloths fart, all right. Well, here's the thing. According to the author's sloths, of course, are famously slow, and they boast incredibly slow digestion, As many as five days can pass between their poops, at which time, of course, they often climbed down from the tree print canopy to do their defecation. And they have an incredibly leafy diet as well, and simplified gut flora that doesn't produce flatus, it produces methane, but the methane

is absorbed in the sloth's blood and is breathed out. Wow. So the takeaways here, Uh, sloths maybe the only mammals that don't fart. We'll discuss another possible mammal or variety of mammal in a second. And it also gives me hope that the giant sloth megathereum breathed fire oh along the lines of the dead snake. Yeah, like maybe it was. I'm not sure how it would get that spark. The spark is the hard part. But if you have a giant sloth breathing out a bunch of methane, then there's

there's hope for fire breathing. I'm trying to imagine how it would happen. What would you have, Like you'd have a megatherium who had a symbiotic relationship with some kind of commensile bombardier beetle. Maybe that like spits some kind of hot compound in front of its mouth right as it was exhaling, and then you got the fire coming out. Yeah, I'm trying, yeah, or I don't know, some sort of like uh, you know, flint based like scraping of rocks. I get carries them around in its mouth. But we're

getting into dragon territory on this. Well, you mentioned another mammal doesn't fart, or at least possibly doesn't fart. I want to know what that is, all right, Well, yeah, this would be and that this is an open question. But possibly the bat so their mammals, and so they have the right gut bacteria to produce flatus, but their digestion is rather speedy to cut down on weight for flight.

The authors point out that even the largest species of bat, the so called flying fox fruit bat, has a mouth to anus digestion time of twelve to thirty four minutes. That's crazy that that is fast. And also, if you've never seen what a flying fox fruit bat looks like, just look up a flying fox. These things are too big to have wings, or at least too big to be mammals to have wings. I guess there might be bigger birds. I don't know. They're huge. They are very

sizeable creatures. And the idea that they're digesting their food and around thirty minutes or less is incredible. One. When you see a flying fox hanging upside down, you're kind of tempted to think that this could be the inspiration for like the idea of bats's vampires, because they don't they look kind of like people. Yeah, they have this like humanoid like, like a loupine appearance. Now, the other major category of note here are the birds. Birds don't fart.

They have all the right, you know, bits of their anatomy, but they lack the gut bacteria to produce the gas. So the authors of does It Fart? They mentioned a nineteen sixty three observation by a Cornell graduate student by the name of Alan Richard vice Broad, who described a quote small puff of whitish gas uh during a blue jay's defecation, but experts later that they argue that, like, you were basically just observing warm water vapor in the cool air, and this was not a fart. It's like

when you can see your breath, right, that's not a fart. Yeah, I mean really, when you come down to the like the scientific observation of farts, like that's how do you how do you see that? It's kind of like trying to see a ghost. That's why you have to have rectal tubes and whatnot. I mean, is there really a reason to inflict rectal tubes on blue jays? No? I mean, especially since everyone seems to agree that birds do not fart, So let's not go inserting any tubes that aren't strictly

necessary for science. Robert, this has been such a wonderful exploration. It has. This has been a fun one. We got from demons to jesters to sloths. I don't know how this happened, but it happened. And here we are closing the fabled fartonomicon at least for now. Uh, we would ask our listeners, Hey, would you like to hear more about the science of farts? Uh than let us know? Maybe maybe there's more. I'm sure there's more, A deeper

dive into a medieval fart literature perhaps, uh. And also, I'd love to hear from any of those nearer toothless individuals that we referenced earlier. Are you one of those rare individuals who produces a little or no uh um, hydrogen or methane in your flatus? Are you in space right now? Let us know we would love to hear from you. We're just inviting people to lie to us. Yeah, I don't fart. Yeah, I wonder how much lying is perpetrated around flash lens. It has to be one of

the major contributors, surely. Yeah. Yeah. So Hey. In the meantime, go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the episodes of the podcast, including this one, with links to some of these books we were referencing. Uh. Also, I'm going to try and put together some sort of a gallery to go along with this episode, because we've referenced some fabulous works of art here. Maybe I can collect a few examples for you, uh and hey, it's stuff to blow your mind dot com.

You will also find links going out to our various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et CETERA. Huge thank you as always to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us to let us know your feedback on this episode or any other, or do you suggest a topic for a future show, or just to say hi, you can always email us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com. Hear ye, Great demons of Hell, watch over us, your disciples. We dedicate ourselves to your service and accept your might and dominion. We call upon your infernal names Satan, Beelzebub, fld Astok, Fartha, met Toots for Real Zies, Barbara Rigmus, Crepitus, rip One and Toots offer arise from the depths of thy cosmic privy and give us a sign of thy power.