From the Vault: The Fartonomicon

What is a fart? From what foul bodily depths does it arise? Join Stuff to Blow Your Mind hosts Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick as they crack open the Fartomicon. Explore the fascinating chemistry of flatus, recoil in horror at the thought of medieval fart demons and consider the curious creatures that enjoy a flatulence-free existence. (Originally published April 17, 2018)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
going to contemplate the age old question what is a
fart that's right? And to answer this question, we are
going to open up the fartonomicon. This is a vault.
This is old episode. We did this one April seventeen.

(00:25):
It's a pretty fun one. We're just talking about the
science of afflatus, where it comes from, what it is,
why doth it smell? Et cetera, and uh and as
I recall, there's a really fun sort of stinger at
the end of this episode. Let's wander on into the stink.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

(00:47):
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert,
let's not dally up a bit. We've got to get
right into it today because I know you are ripping
to talk about the connection between demonology and flatulence. That's right,

(01:08):
I mean, it's it's it's hidden in the title itself, right,
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,

(01:32):
of course it is, and it goes deep, deep into time,
just as demons seem to do. Uh So, Yeah, demonology
does seem 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

(01:56):
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

(02:18):
discuss here. You know. One of my my favorite accounts
certain 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

(02:42):
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
in to the Malaboga, the as a region of the

(03:02):
Hell with all of these uh, these these pits, these
boulders in which various tortures are taking place and roaming
about are the Malibranchia, the the evil clause. There 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,

(03:27):
which means evil tale, and he's apparently the leader of
the group. So I'm going to 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

(03:50):
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,

(04:10):
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

(04:34):
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 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

(04:55):
period in which this has been a matter of scholarly
debate over whether this is supposed to 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 humor that is to be
found throughout Inferno. Especially things get less funny as you
get up to towards a paradise. But there there are

(05:17):
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 scruciating detail the terrors
and tortures of Hell, he sometimes also seems to be
sort of satirizing the foibles of humanity. Yeah, and skewering

(05:40):
his personal enemies. Yes. Yes, So for instance, those demon
names that I mentioned earlier, like 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, they seal packs with their butts, and of

(06:02):
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.

(06:24):
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 flatuents against
the faithful. I did run across this account of fourth
century Christian monk Evagoras of Pontus warning that demons may
bloat the faithful with flatulence to distract them from religious observation.

(06:49):
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 right up where I think
the the that 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

(07:11):
to a non Christian religion was was harmless. And then
they talk about some of the the signs that you
may have demon e spirit any and one of them
is flat mns. Really yes, really, yes. It is kind
of odd to see in the modern day people associating
an evil spirit or kind of Uh. I don't know.
I feel like generally the idea of an evil spirit

(07:34):
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

(07:58):
and every day reality city 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

(08:21):
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

(08:44):
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 Martin Luther quotes that use scatological reference, says, probably
with the most famous one is quote but I resist
the devil, and often it is with a fart that

(09:06):
I chase him away. That's great because so it's not
just a rebuke, but it's also like uh and and
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 just
missed the devil. Yeah, it's not just merely a get

(09:27):
behind me satan um, it's get behind me satan. Now
here comes a twot. 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
j Iko 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,

(09:49):
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 by oh ruh Okay, we
got another one here. A slanderer does nothing but ruminate
the filth of others with his own teeth and wallow

(10:09):
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,

(10:31):
look how he is on himself, the best answer is
you go eat it. He's he's almost there's almost like
a childish glee that 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

(10:52):
the pope quote, I will give a fart for a
staff you Satan, Antichrist or Pope can lean on it
a stinking thing. 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

(11:15):
in fact, Valerie Allen did just that, really 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 phart anomicon, uh,
in its own right. So I just wanted to pull
a few choice tidbits from the text. So she She,

(11:36):
for instance, mentions, uh, the fourteenth century Icelandic tale of
of poor Stein's powdern 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

(11:58):
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,

(12:19):
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 wales 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 fart.

(12:41):
My breeches, I break, which again is just kind of
another of us 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. Yeah, more like Alexander poop though. I'm a right.
So I want to share one more quote from Valerie

(13:04):
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.

(13:24):
The show of the Cosmos. I just love that because
it does it just sums up so much of this
this energy and inter interconnectedness between bodily movements and flatulence
and these demonic entities and just the overall like theological
structure of the universe. Christian cosmology reduced to just your

(13:49):
everyday bowel movement on the potty. And of course the
Christian tradition is not the only tradition to to play
with flat 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

(14:10):
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

(14:33):
a fart joke. It is a fart joke from ancient Mesopotamia.
It's a Sumerian joke that traces back to about nineteen
b C. 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

(14:54):
did not fart in her husband's lap. Okay. I think
may 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

(15:16):
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

(15:38):
supports uh the idea of of the bicameral 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

(15:58):
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 theory, and I would I would hate it
if it were an ancient fart joke that truly brought

(16:20):
it down, like this was the this was the arrow
that managed to to kill the piece. That's the nail
in the coffin. Is the 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 illustrations from medieval Japanese art. So, Robert,

(16:45):
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

(17:06):
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,

(17:28):
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

(17:49):
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

(18:10):
pretty smart, like Mortal Kombat. Yeah, Neighbor's right there, all
kinds of havoc and destruction. And this particular scroll actually
appears to be part of a larger tradition of fart
battle art works. 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 Phallic Contest hand

(18:33):
Scroll in Japanese Art in the Japan Review in and
Yano describes one art scroll housed at the Mitsui Memorial
Museum in Tokyo, 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

(18:54):
male members, and then it's also got a fart battle component.
And in the fart attle 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

(19:18):
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,

(19:40):
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
hadukans 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

(20:03):
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 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

(20:25):
you know previously about Roland the Farter? I had not
heard of Roland the Farter. No, do tell of Roland
the Farter. Well, there's a really great Warren Zevon song
about him. I'm getting confused for something else 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 twelve hundred, edited by Julia Crick and

(20:46):
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

(21:07):
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,

(21:28):
except instead of being a knight 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

(21:49):
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 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

(22:10):
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, it 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

(22:33):
a day. You know, everything's the reverse for the For
the jester, what 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 flatus

(22:56):
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

(23:17):
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 once

(23:40):
and it's your whole identity. Yeah, that's like I think
that's a human fear like that if if if you
let one rip in the wrong context, 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 a exactly the route that the role in

(24:01):
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 Allen 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

(24:24):
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

(24:46):
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 this is near speculation on my part,
but I wonder if it could have been more of
a role. It's kind of like bos the clown or
you know, you could have different actors playing Roland the Farter,
and therefore he could live for the doctor. Yeah, yeah,

(25:08):
you know, every time the doctor disappears, you have a
new role in the farther 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 of the Farter chronicles. All right, I
think we should take a quick break, and when we
come back we will look at the science of flatulence.
Thank thank Alright, we're back. So what exactly is flatulence?

(25:33):
Tell me, Robert, Well, when you you boil it down
to just the basics, it's gas produced during digestion, and
flat us only 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 we

(25:53):
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.

(26:15):
But let's talk about the composition of the average two. Yeah,
so how much does the average person fart? All right?
So I'm sure people out there are wondering, like 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

(26:36):
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 ripped
between five hundred and two thousand mill leaders of gas
per day, and each bout is likely to be thirty
five to nine million leaders. Okay, just did some extremely

(26:59):
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. Alright, 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

(27:21):
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 seemed more proper
for men to regularly pass gas versus women, and therefore
women might um contain themselves more than the men. I'm

(27:42):
not sure how that research actually lines up with our
figures here, though. Is there far 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 in nineteen and
fabulous eye article in which is primary source is gastro

(28:03):
inturologist 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, but according
to this article of flatus is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
and methane. I read somewhere that among some people tested,

(28:26):
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. Even the methane,
the remaining one percent of the composition is to blame
for the smell, and it's the byproduct of the microbe

(28:50):
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 Levett, the same levet we mentioned earlier called
Identification of Gases responsible for the Odor of humanflate us

(29:13):
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

(29:34):
good start. So results results were that most but not
quite all, of the malodorous compounds and humanflate us were
sulfur based compounds, and the following were 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

(29:55):
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

(30:17):
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

(30:39):
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, Like, it's kind
of by context really exactly, it's kind of nice, but
it can also get kind of kind of foul. Yeah,

(31:01):
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 you're essentially talking about a

(31:22):
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

(31:44):
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 all so determined
after treatment of flatus samples with zinc acetate which binds

(32:04):
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,

(32:26):
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

(32:48):
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 it
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

(33:11):
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,

(33:32):
except maybe beans. Well, even 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 rold toots today, or I have a
bad case of the beef farts, huh uh, yeah, it's

(33:53):
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 twot categories. The more complex the carbohydrates

(34:14):
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
food such as this. That's where you really in your
fart city. And this is because the more complex carbohydrates

(34:37):
are more difficult to break down, requiring more work in
the lower regions of the bowels. In general, however, it's
not only the creatures diet that's gonna be a major factor,
but also the specific gut floor that they have the
specific you know, microbes that are residing within them to
aid in their digestion. But then then also overall health

(34:58):
of the individual. So these gonna care after. 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 of flashlens 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 going to fart the most?

(35:18):
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,

(35:39):
that brings us right back to the demonic associations. I wonder,
I wonder now speaking of fire and brimstone, Mary Wroach
actually breaks down the flammable components of platist 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. H and and Mary does have a close

(36:00):
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 plates is hydrogen. That's interesting.
I wonder how that compares to what I read that

(36:21):
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 farts,
which is actually seriously dangerous behavior, right and you and

(36:44):
you will see why it's dangerous as we roll out
some of the details. Um but but Roachhe does describe
a few of the more harrowing cases of flate is fire,
such as the fatal ninety 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

(37:07):
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

(37:27):
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 bammo. This is why
Roach says there's so much overkill in pre colonoscopy bowel cleansing.

(37:49):
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 a colonoscopy. Uh. And she she also

(38:12):
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 a thing.

(38:32):
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,

(38:53):
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 the concentration. That's
not dangerous. That's right to 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

(39:15):
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

(39:35):
Alabama's Stephen Secor. Uh. If you look him up, he's
almost always draped in a serpent, 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 the sort of

(39:56):
gas a large snake would generate snakes too far? Yeah, Like, yeah,
that they do. 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

(40:18):
that itself had just previously eaten a whole bunch of grass.
Now bear in mind that many plant eaters lacking rumans
have a seesome. There's 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

(40:40):
for the plant eaters that they're gobbled and gobbling down whole.
So that's quite a lot of methane building up in there.
So imagine some prehistoric hunters dragging a gorge snake homb
to the campfire. You know, something that's just thick with
its recent meal, some sort of whole large herbivore just
lodged in its being broken down. So the hunters dragged

(41:03):
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 hush 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.

(41:27):
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

(41:47):
experimental bean meal fed to volunteers who had been rigged
via erectal catheter to out gas into a measurement device. Yeah,
he was interested in individual differences, not just in the
overall volume of latest, 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

(42:11):
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 is free. So here's a quote. I
don't believe that. Yoh, well, I don't know. It's it's

(42:31):
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 flateust on one 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

(42:53):
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

(43:16):
being the requirement though? That shut you down to become
an astronaut. So it's like you've ever since you're a
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

(43:37):
rectal tube in you and they say, I'm sorry, you
produced too much flat us. You can't go to Mars. Yeah.
It's like you're super qualified, but your fart so 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 make them more resistant to UH solar and cosmic radiation,

(44:00):
or or make them resistant to microgravity 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

(44:22):
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

(44:45):
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 implication of gut flora for all kinds
of body health up and down the line are discussed

(45:05):
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

(45:28):
to take another break, and when we come back, we're
going to discuss some of the notable toots of the
animal Kingdom. 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

(45:51):
noticed in the past couple of days on the Internet
other people are catching onto this book. It's making a buzz,
that's right. The name of the book is Does It Art?
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

(46:13):
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

(46:34):
year old son, to myself, and it's it's tremendous fun.
So I highly recommend getting a copy of this. I'll
make sure 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 the West Indian manateee. I

(46:58):
was really impressed with this one because we've just gust
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 in an aquarium setting. But I had
not heard this particular tidbit the authors point out. They
quote the manatees and testines have small pouches throughout that
allow for gas storage. This unusual anatomy allows the West

(47:22):
Indian manatee 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 there. It's it's almost like

(47:43):
they're these these fart powered blimps flying, you know, through
the ocean. Uh. And they point out that, in fact,
if if a manatee is constipated, it screws everything up
and they'll often float with their tail too high because
there's too much gas built up there. Throws off the buoyancy.
You know. I was flip them through this morning and
I found a section on iguanas, and so I was

(48:04):
that that intrigued me Iguanas. Sometimes they've got this look
in their face like I don't fart. They don't 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 cornuta,
they apparently tend to produce quote wet sounding farts. Uh,

(48:28):
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 farts during defecation. One that I found

(48:49):
interesting was the termite. You don't You might not think
about farting termites, but here's the thing. They're kind of
super farters and according to the authors here, they produce
five to nineteen per and of global methane emissions. Yeah,
or is that possible? Or point to seven percent of
greenhouse emissions hermites, Yeah, amazing, Yeah, just in there, munch

(49:10):
inwood 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

(49:31):
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 kgms of methane per sauropod per day. Now,
speaking of methane producing herbivores, I think we should look
at the cow. Yes, there's actually a section on the

(49:54):
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.

(50:16):
There was a fourteen 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 percent of total emissions from all sources.
And just to put that in context, according to an

(50:37):
analysis by the U s d a UH, they estimated
that agriculture accounts for about ten percent of US greenhouse
gas emissions, so i'd be thirty nine percent 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 fifty five percent from beef cattle, and nineteen

(50:58):
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 ms of methane emissions per
cow per year. And when you're measuring in kilograms, you're

(51:19):
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,

(51:41):
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 production
of gut methane. But they've got this ruminant digestion method, right,

(52:04):
and so they end up just spitting out a lot
of carbon dioxide, methane and greenhouse gasses from the mouth.
H 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

(52:27):
first is the sloth. So sloth, I don't believe it
slows 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

(52:49):
days can pass between their poops at which time, of course,
they often climb down from the tree quint canopy to
do their defecation. And they have an incredibly lead he
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,

(53:13):
swaths maybe the only mammals that don't fart. We'll discuss
another possible mammal or variety of mammal on a second.
And it also gives me hope that the giant swath
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

(53:35):
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 commencil bombardier beetle. Maybe that like
spit 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

(53:57):
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 they're mammals, and so they

(54:22):
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

(54:44):
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

(55:07):
of tempted to think that this could be the inspiration
for like the idea of bats as vampires, because they
don't they look kind of like people. Yeah, they have
this like humanoid like, like a lupine 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

(55:29):
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 They they
argue that like, you were basically just observing warm water

(55:51):
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 sign sientific 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

(56:14):
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,

(56:36):
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 near toothless individuals that we referenced earlier.

(56:58):
Are you one of those rare individ jewels 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.

(57:21):
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. 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

(57:44):
Blow your Mind dot com. You'll 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

(58:04):
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. Here, you, great demons of Hell,

(58:52):
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, flid asterak Fartha, met Toots
for real Zies, Barbara Rigmus, Crepitus, rip One, and toots Afer.

(59:14):
Arise from the depths of thy cosmic privy, and give
us a sign of thy power.