Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to contemplate the age old question what is a
Speaker 1: fart that's right? And to answer this question, we are
Speaker 1: going to open up the fartonomicon. This is a vault.
Speaker 1: This is old episode. We did this one April seventeen.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty fun one. We're just talking about the
Speaker 1: science of afflatus, where it comes from, what it is,
Speaker 1: why doth it smell? Et cetera, and uh and as
Speaker 1: I recall, there's a really fun sort of stinger at
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. Let's wander on into the stink.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert,
Speaker 1: let's not dally up a bit. We've got to get
Speaker 1: right into it today because I know you are ripping
Speaker 1: to talk about the connection between demonology and flatulence. That's right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's hidden in the title itself, right,
Speaker 1: the fartonomicon. We're going to be discussing, not only the
Speaker 1: actual science of farts. But this, this fascinating connection between
Speaker 1: demonology and flatulence. And I want to note by the
Speaker 1: way that the word fart predates flatulence and goes back
Speaker 1: at least to the fourteenth century. And of course the
Speaker 1: reality of human flatulence is is far older than humanity,
Speaker 1: of course it is, and it goes deep, deep into time,
Speaker 1: just as demons seem to do. Uh So, Yeah, demonology
Speaker 1: does seem to have a whole lot of farting in it.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the funny things. You know.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I was taught at church
Speaker 1: not to say cuss words, and cuss words included a
Speaker 1: lot of potty language and words for defecation and things
Speaker 1: like that. But if you go back into say the
Speaker 1: Renaissance or the medieval period before that, you will actually
Speaker 1: find a lot of pious holy men writing about theological
Speaker 1: topics who are also quite potty mouthed. Yes that they
Speaker 1: have their head, They have their head both in the
Speaker 1: heavens and in the toilet at the same time. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: that connection between heaven and the toilet is something we'll
Speaker 1: discuss here. You know. One of my my favorite accounts
Speaker 1: certain this of course, is a medieval account from one
Speaker 1: of the great works of medieval literature, and particularly Italian
Speaker 1: medieval literature, UH, Dante's Inferno, of course, uh to refresh everyone,
Speaker 1: of course. In in Dante's Inferno, Dante himself is guided
Speaker 1: by the deceased poet Virgil through Hell, through the underworld
Speaker 1: in a journey that will eventually take him back up
Speaker 1: to Paradise. Now, I love the Inferno, but I honestly
Speaker 1: did not remember the farting segments. Oh man, the Inferno.
Speaker 1: So Robert, you're gonna you're gonna have to illuminate me,
Speaker 1: educate me on the farting. All right, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: set the stage here. Here we have our duo venturing
Speaker 1: in to the Malaboga, the as a region of the
Speaker 1: Hell with all of these uh, these these pits, these
Speaker 1: boulders in which various tortures are taking place and roaming
Speaker 1: about are the Malibranchia, the the evil clause. There is
Speaker 1: a group of demons that are patrolling about and you know,
Speaker 1: torturing uh as part of their job. And they all
Speaker 1: have fabulous names like Scarmiglion, which means troublemaker, and Malacotah,
Speaker 1: which means evil tale, and he's apparently the leader of
Speaker 1: the group. So I'm going to read just a bit
Speaker 1: here from this encounter. Oh me, what is it, master,
Speaker 1: that I see pray? Let us go? I said, without
Speaker 1: an escort, If thou knowest how since for myself I
Speaker 1: asked none. If thou art as observant as thy want is,
Speaker 1: dost thou not see that they do nash their teeth
Speaker 1: and with their brows are threatening woe to us. And
Speaker 1: he to me quote, I will not have the fear
Speaker 1: Let them nash on according to their fancy, because they
Speaker 1: do it for those boiling wretches along the left hand dike,
Speaker 1: they wheeled about, but first had each one thrust his
Speaker 1: tongue between his teeth toward their leader for a signal,
Speaker 1: and he had made a trumpet of his rump, trumpet
Speaker 1: of his rump. That is like the ultimate hell signal.
Speaker 1: Now we see that kind of blasphemous behavior also in
Speaker 1: the Monty Python animations. You know, in Monty Python and
Speaker 1: the Holy Grail, there's a scene depicting like cartoon versions
Speaker 1: of the heavens, and it definitely includes people playing musical
Speaker 1: instruments with their butts and then of course, I can't
Speaker 1: help but think of the French insult, uh I fart
Speaker 1: in your general direction. Oh yeah, there's that too. The
Speaker 1: funny thing about about this trumpet of his rump business
Speaker 1: is that scholars have actually argued for more than a century.
Speaker 1: It seems like the last century has really been the
Speaker 1: period in which this has been a matter of scholarly
Speaker 1: debate over whether this is supposed to funny or not.
Speaker 1: Why would it not be funny? I know, I mean
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember my college Dante professor thinking it was
Speaker 1: funny and generally enjoying the humor that is to be
Speaker 1: found throughout Inferno. Especially things get less funny as you
Speaker 1: get up to towards a paradise. But there there are
Speaker 1: plenty of moments that I think we can legitimately say
Speaker 1: are funny within Inferno. Yeah. Well, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely there. In the same time that Dante is uh
Speaker 1: depicting and sometimes very lavish and scruciating detail the terrors
Speaker 1: and tortures of Hell, he sometimes also seems to be
Speaker 1: sort of satirizing the foibles of humanity. Yeah, and skewering
Speaker 1: his personal enemies. Yes. Yes, So for instance, those demon
Speaker 1: names that I mentioned earlier, like Scarmiglian. Apparently these these
Speaker 1: names are plays upon various family names that that Dante
Speaker 1: took issue with as well. Right now, in general, we
Speaker 1: should add there there's a lot of butt action when
Speaker 1: it comes to Christian demonology. Lots of demons speak from
Speaker 1: their butts, they seal packs with their butts, and of
Speaker 1: course they're all about doing things too human butts in
Speaker 1: hell depending on the depictions. Uh. And you can have
Speaker 1: a field day teasing apart all of the various elements
Speaker 1: wound up in this sort of butt centric myth making. Folks,
Speaker 1: if you haven't already figured it out, this episode is
Speaker 1: gonna be heavy with a lot of like butts and flatulence.
Speaker 1: So if you're not interested, uh, you may be warned
Speaker 1: to tune out now because it will continue, Yes it will.
Speaker 1: It will not stop until we reach the end. Uh.
Speaker 1: So another thing I should point out this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, this link between demons and flatuents. There is
Speaker 1: this idea that you see where demons use flatuents against
Speaker 1: the faithful. I did run across this account of fourth
Speaker 1: century Christian monk Evagoras of Pontus warning that demons may
Speaker 1: bloat the faithful with flatulence to distract them from religious observation.
Speaker 1: That is an insidious tactic. Did that go in the
Speaker 1: screwtape letters? That's that's smart, it should have. Incidentally, I
Speaker 1: did run across a contemporary right up where I think
Speaker 1: the the that was arguing for the demonic powers of
Speaker 1: yoga and how it was. It was one of these
Speaker 1: wonderful accounts where the like, yes, I too have been
Speaker 1: to a yoga class, and I thought it's connections to
Speaker 1: to a non Christian religion was was harmless. And then
Speaker 1: they talk about some of the the signs that you
Speaker 1: may have demon e spirit any and one of them
Speaker 1: is flat mns. Really yes, really, yes. It is kind
Speaker 1: of odd to see in the modern day people associating
Speaker 1: an evil spirit or kind of Uh. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like generally the idea of an evil spirit
Speaker 1: has been more abstracted these days, but it is very
Speaker 1: true if you go back into history, there's a very
Speaker 1: physical kind of quality to it that it that it
Speaker 1: is embodied by bad smells and bad physical forces and
Speaker 1: excrement and things like that. Yeah, and yet still you
Speaker 1: have to realize that all of these individuals, uh, they
Speaker 1: experienced flatulence as just a regular aspect of their lives
Speaker 1: and every day reality city of their biology. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: this guy gets flatulence in church, is that also a
Speaker 1: demon possessing him? Yeah? I mean, let's let's not be
Speaker 1: silly about it like that. Those those guys are gonna
Speaker 1: fart in church. It's just going to happen, no matter
Speaker 1: how holy the monk uh, there is going to be
Speaker 1: a bit of a flat us in play. Now. It's
Speaker 1: obvious that many people in the Middle Ages, and lots
Speaker 1: of people involved in creating Christian theology and mythology have
Speaker 1: been interested in the idea of flatulence and the role
Speaker 1: that plays in demonology. But sometimes it goes beyond the demonology.
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that that some of these theologians really
Speaker 1: do seem to have their head in the toilet. And
Speaker 1: who I mainly had in mind was Martin Luther, because
Speaker 1: I know Martin Luther loved some potty humor jokes, and
Speaker 1: he he was he had a he had a wicked,
Speaker 1: witty pin and he would fling just powerful volleys of scatological,
Speaker 1: excoriating invective against his enemies. Yeah, they're a number of
Speaker 1: different Martin Luther quotes that use scatological reference, says, probably
Speaker 1: with the most famous one is quote but I resist
Speaker 1: the devil, and often it is with a fart that
Speaker 1: I chase him away. That's great because so it's not
Speaker 1: just a rebuke, but it's also like uh and and
Speaker 1: implied diminishment of the power of the devil. Right, It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't need powerful spiritual forces or strong weapons or
Speaker 1: anything like that to chase the devil away. I just
Speaker 1: missed the devil. Yeah, it's not just merely a get
Speaker 1: behind me satan um, it's get behind me satan. Now
Speaker 1: here comes a twot. And of course there are other
Speaker 1: examples of this as well. I was looking at a
Speaker 1: book titled luther Man Between God and the Devil by
Speaker 1: j Iko A Oberman, who points out that Luther often
Speaker 1: used poopy language against the devil and his work. So
Speaker 1: here are just a few examples. Uh and and Joe,
Speaker 1: maybe you can you can read these with me. Uh
Speaker 1: here's one. But if that is not enough for you,
Speaker 1: you devil, I also have and wipe your mouth on
Speaker 1: that and take a hearty by oh ruh Okay, we
Speaker 1: got another one here. A slanderer does nothing but ruminate
Speaker 1: the filth of others with his own teeth and wallow
Speaker 1: like a pig with his nose in the dirt. That
Speaker 1: is also why his dropping stink most surpassed only by
Speaker 1: the devil's. And though man drops his excrements in private,
Speaker 1: the slanderer does not respect this privacy. He gluts on
Speaker 1: the pleasure of wallowing in it, and he does not
Speaker 1: deserve better. According to God's righteous judgment. When the slanderer whispers,
Speaker 1: look how he is on himself, the best answer is
Speaker 1: you go eat it. He's he's almost there's almost like
Speaker 1: a childish glee that is that is that is present
Speaker 1: in these quotes. Yes, and of course Luther, being the
Speaker 1: author of the Christian Reformation, you know, the birth of Protestantism,
Speaker 1: Luther of course had a lot of farty invective for
Speaker 1: the pope quote, I will give a fart for a
Speaker 1: staff you Satan, Antichrist or Pope can lean on it
Speaker 1: a stinking thing. Man. This is making me think I
Speaker 1: would not want to make enemies with Martin Luther. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's going to really let you have it,
Speaker 1: maybe physically. Now, all of this makes me think that
Speaker 1: you could actually write a whole book on the cultural
Speaker 1: significance of farting in Middle Age Europe, you could, And
Speaker 1: in fact, Valerie Allen did just that, really yeah, in
Speaker 1: her book on Farting, Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: published in two thousand seven. And uh, this is just
Speaker 1: this is a rich tone. This is truly a phart anomicon, uh,
Speaker 1: in its own right. So I just wanted to pull
Speaker 1: a few choice tidbits from the text. So she She,
Speaker 1: for instance, mentions, uh, the fourteenth century Icelandic tale of
Speaker 1: of poor Stein's powdern Skulks, in which a demon arises
Speaker 1: from the depths of a twenty two seat toilet to
Speaker 1: confront our hero whoa So is it like the number
Speaker 1: of seats is proportional to the depths of degradation that
Speaker 1: the toilet embodies. I guess, So, you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that those twenty two seats share a common pit
Speaker 1: of foulness, and it's it takes. It's that sort of
Speaker 1: foulness from which the demon must arise. She also notes
Speaker 1: that late medieval art often depicts demons is covered in
Speaker 1: fecal matter, as well as the mystery plays of the time,
Speaker 1: So an example of this from Alan. She says that
Speaker 1: in the drama The Fall of Lucifer, as Lucifer quote
Speaker 1: thuds to his stinking sty, he wales for fear of fire,
Speaker 1: I crack a fart. And then in the Fall of
Speaker 1: Man you have this character Diabolos, and he cries out.
Speaker 1: And this is of course the translation on account of
Speaker 1: this fall, I am starting to quake with a fart.
Speaker 1: My breeches, I break, which again is just kind of
Speaker 1: another of us like grade school poopy insult or parody
Speaker 1: leveled at at the devil. It has some of the
Speaker 1: wit of the couplets you see in like Dryden and
Speaker 1: Alexander Pope. Yeah, more like Alexander poop though. I'm a right.
Speaker 1: So I want to share one more quote from Valerie
Speaker 1: Allen because she she sums up a lot of this
Speaker 1: very nicely, and and she says the following quote. If
Speaker 1: in the popular theatrical imagination, Satan's descent to bottomless perdition
Speaker 1: is punctuated by flatulence, it is a natural consequence to
Speaker 1: picture him as the load that Heaven discharges into Hell.
Speaker 1: The show of the Cosmos. I just love that because
Speaker 1: it does it just sums up so much of this
Speaker 1: this energy and inter interconnectedness between bodily movements and flatulence
Speaker 1: and these demonic entities and just the overall like theological
Speaker 1: structure of the universe. Christian cosmology reduced to just your
Speaker 1: everyday bowel movement on the potty. And of course the
Speaker 1: Christian tradition is not the only tradition to to play
Speaker 1: with flat lens, not at all. So yeah, we will
Speaker 1: leave the Christian tradition for a moment and look at
Speaker 1: the fact that fart humor goes way back and covers
Speaker 1: pretty much the entire world. There are fart jokes everywhere
Speaker 1: and they go deep into history. There's actually a writer
Speaker 1: and academic named Paul McDonald who he teaches at the
Speaker 1: University of Wolverhampton, and he was involved in this list
Speaker 1: that came out a few years back. That was where
Speaker 1: they were trying to find the oldest jokes known in history.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that, according to this University of
Speaker 1: Wolverhampton list, the oldest known joke at the time was
Speaker 1: a fart joke. It is a fart joke from ancient Mesopotamia.
Speaker 1: It's a Sumerian joke that traces back to about nineteen
Speaker 1: b C. E, making it almost four thousand years old,
Speaker 1: and it reads in translation as the following quote, something
Speaker 1: which has never occurred since time immemorial, A young woman
Speaker 1: did not fart in her husband's lap. Okay. I think
Speaker 1: may maybe like the the particulars of the joke don't
Speaker 1: don't carry well across you know, more than four millennia.
Speaker 1: But it does seem to Yeah, it's lost something in
Speaker 1: in translation, maybe language wise and definitely culturally. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is topical humor for the time. Is
Speaker 1: it like there was a big problem with I don't know,
Speaker 1: dudes getting married and then their wife farting in their lap.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but that's what it seems to suggest.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody will be like, oh, yeah, that always happens. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a mandatory contemplation here. Do you think
Speaker 1: that the presence of an ancient fart joke like this
Speaker 1: supports uh the idea of of the bicameral mind Julian
Speaker 1: James's theory? Or is it? Or? Is it? Or is
Speaker 1: this uh? Or is this some some ammunition one could
Speaker 1: use against it? I don't know. I guess i'd say
Speaker 1: it's neutral. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't say supports okay, But
Speaker 1: but I do wonder what would one, given the particulars
Speaker 1: of of the bicameral theory, would would one have to
Speaker 1: be conscious as a modern human is conscious in order
Speaker 1: to make a fart joke like this. That's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know how humor would play into the presence
Speaker 1: of consciousness. Yeah. I will say though that I love
Speaker 1: Julian James theory, and I would I would hate it
Speaker 1: if it were an ancient fart joke that truly brought
Speaker 1: it down, like this was the this was the arrow
Speaker 1: that managed to to kill the piece. That's the nail
Speaker 1: in the coffin. Is the fart joke? Yeah? Sorry, James
Speaker 1: could be well, I say we look elsewhere for more
Speaker 1: fart jokes in history. One of the best that I
Speaker 1: have come across is actually not a verbal joke, but
Speaker 1: it is a series of amazing illustrations from medieval Japanese art. So, Robert,
Speaker 1: have you seen these medieval Japanese fart scrolls? I had
Speaker 1: not until you showed them to me this morning. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've seen so many different bits of Japanese art that
Speaker 1: depict basically just all sorts of body horror, be they
Speaker 1: in the form of yokai or other monster stories, or
Speaker 1: or even just like the magical testicle based ability of
Speaker 1: the raccoon dogs. So in Edo period Japan, which is
Speaker 1: the early seventeenth to mid nineteenth century, some artists or
Speaker 1: group of artists created a collection of artworks that have
Speaker 1: now been digitized and you can find them at the
Speaker 1: website of Waseda University Library. And these artworks are contained
Speaker 1: on a scroll known as hay Gassin or fart Battle,
Speaker 1: and the name says it all. You've got dudes blasting
Speaker 1: each other with farts in every way you can imagine,
Speaker 1: but not just any farts. These are kind of a supernatural,
Speaker 1: high powered fart that appears to have the power to
Speaker 1: knock people over and do all kinds of damage. It's
Speaker 1: represented in the artwork as a kind of spreading beam
Speaker 1: of darkness that comes out of the butt. And so
Speaker 1: it's you've got dudes farting and enemies while riding on horseback.
Speaker 1: You've got dudes farting through holes in the walls. You've
Speaker 1: got farting on cats. I don't know why, sometimes farting
Speaker 1: at cats and the cats are like and then you've
Speaker 1: got people farting into bags and then releasing the bags
Speaker 1: on rivals, and then repelling farts with handheld fans. That's
Speaker 1: pretty smart, like Mortal Kombat. Yeah, Neighbor's right there, all
Speaker 1: kinds of havoc and destruction. And this particular scroll actually
Speaker 1: appears to be part of a larger tradition of fart
Speaker 1: battle art works. I found one academic article discussing medieval
Speaker 1: Japanese fart battles in art, and it was by Akiko Yano.
Speaker 1: The article was called Historiography of the Phallic Contest hand
Speaker 1: Scroll in Japanese Art in the Japan Review in and
Speaker 1: Yano describes one art scroll housed at the Mitsui Memorial
Speaker 1: Museum in Tokyo, which is known as catchier a Maki,
Speaker 1: and it's a hand scroll that contains both the phallic
Speaker 1: contest component that was in the title of the paper,
Speaker 1: which is a competition quote among men with surrealistically huge
Speaker 1: male members, and then it's also got a fart battle component.
Speaker 1: And in the fart attle section, the only text is
Speaker 1: a few brief descriptions of what is happening in some
Speaker 1: of the artworks. Examples of the explanatory text include quote.
Speaker 1: They prepare to fart like arrows by drinking cold water
Speaker 1: to chill their bellies, picking sweet acorns and eating them
Speaker 1: with raw chestnuts. Their stomachs are chilled. Now they line
Speaker 1: up to fart like arrows by eating hot rice porridge. Okay,
Speaker 1: now this lines up with some of the science will
Speaker 1: be discussing later. Yes, And finally they collect the farts
Speaker 1: in a bag and prepare to volley fart arrows. Fart arrows,
Speaker 1: fart arrows. All right. I really like the way that's written,
Speaker 1: as if it's like you should already know what a
Speaker 1: fart arrow is. But yeah. Another interesting thing Yano points
Speaker 1: out in the article is that many of the figures
Speaker 1: depicted in these artworks releasing these huge sort of fart
Speaker 1: hadukans are supposed to be priests. They're dressed as priests,
Speaker 1: So you have to wonder, it's like, is there a
Speaker 1: satirical aspect to this? Yeah, I mean we see this
Speaker 1: in East and West, right, this idea perhaps that you know,
Speaker 1: no matter how holy this particular holy man or woman
Speaker 1: may seem, we all know that they fart, and we
Speaker 1: can imagine it, and sometimes, if we're lucky, we can
Speaker 1: hear it, and and it's it serves to sort of
Speaker 1: knock them down a peg, at least in our minds. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got one more good one, Robert, did you did
Speaker 1: you know previously about Roland the Farter? I had not
Speaker 1: heard of Roland the Farter. No, do tell of Roland
Speaker 1: the Farter. Well, there's a really great Warren Zevon song
Speaker 1: about him. I'm getting confused for something else on the
Speaker 1: head of Thompson Gunner. Yeah. So there is a section
Speaker 1: on good old Roland in the book A Social History
Speaker 1: of England nine twelve hundred, edited by Julia Crick and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth van Houts. And this is discussing what went on
Speaker 1: in the court of the English King Henry the Second,
Speaker 1: who ruled in the middle of the twelfth century. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this quote quote. At the royal court,
Speaker 1: Christmas was evidently a time for special entertainments, as suggested
Speaker 1: by the records of one Roland le Patur also called
Speaker 1: rue landas Lefarterre, who was granted a sergeanty, apparently of
Speaker 1: the late twelfth century. And aside note, a sergeanty was
Speaker 1: part of the feudal system, where a person would be
Speaker 1: awarded control of a feudal estate in exchange for some
Speaker 1: non standard service rendered. So basically it was kind of
Speaker 1: like a feudal knighthood. You'd be given a grant of land,
Speaker 1: except instead of being a knight in service of the
Speaker 1: King of the queen, you would do some kind of
Speaker 1: other service. But going back to the quote, his grant
Speaker 1: is typical of that given to favored entertainers as well
Speaker 1: as to others of service to the king. In his case,
Speaker 1: it included the requirement of performing saltum siffletum petum, or
Speaker 1: a jump, a whistle a fart before the king on
Speaker 1: Christmas Day. The phrase was a stock expression and seems
Speaker 1: to represent standard buffoonery, the kind of thing that constitute
Speaker 1: a jester's performance, and so it is likely that Roland
Speaker 1: the Farter was a royal jester and the fart was
Speaker 1: his stock in trade. I wonder if these were legitimate
Speaker 1: farts or were these like sort of clown based farts.
Speaker 1: Did he have some sort of cushioned devices at a
Speaker 1: poem in the armpit kind of thing. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: tend to suggest they wouldn't settle for anything less than
Speaker 1: the real thing. Isn't that interesting? Because you can in
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, we have these these
Speaker 1: festivals in which the fool has made king for for
Speaker 1: a day. You know, everything's the reverse for the For
Speaker 1: the jester, what in the in the actual king's court
Speaker 1: to fart in the king's presence? Uh, could be a
Speaker 1: extreme embarrassment. It could it could diminish your standing in
Speaker 1: the royal court. And yet the opposite is true for
Speaker 1: the jester. What it would if he has called upon
Speaker 1: to to do his performance and he has no flatus
Speaker 1: upon which to call it could that could be disaster,
Speaker 1: That could could cause his head to be separated from
Speaker 1: his body. Yeah, I can't remember the details, but you've
Speaker 1: just called to mind a story I think I recall
Speaker 1: about some lord or some some noble dignitary whoever, who
Speaker 1: was appearing before Queen Elizabeth the First and who I've
Speaker 1: heard this one farted in her presence and it was
Speaker 1: so embarrassing that he essentially had to leave the country,
Speaker 1: or at least disappeared to somewhere somewhere far away for
Speaker 1: a while, but then came back. Is the version of
Speaker 1: the story that he came back years later, and it
Speaker 1: presented himself before the queen and she said, I remember you,
Speaker 1: you're the boy who farted again again if it once
Speaker 1: and it's your whole identity. Yeah, that's like I think
Speaker 1: that's a human fear like that if if if you
Speaker 1: let one rip in the wrong context, that fart will
Speaker 1: haunt you forever for no good reason, because again everyone
Speaker 1: does this, This is a basic aspect of of human behavior. Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that is a exactly the route that the role in
Speaker 1: the Farter story goes down, So it has a kind
Speaker 1: of sad ending. According to stories collected. Actually, oh you
Speaker 1: know what, I just realized in a book that's the
Speaker 1: same Valerie Allen book you mentioned earlier. Yeah, so in
Speaker 1: that same Valerie Allen book, apparently she she talks about
Speaker 1: how a later king, probably Henry the third, took the crown,
Speaker 1: and the story goes that the laughs dried up and
Speaker 1: this king did not find Roland's act very funny, and
Speaker 1: he revoked Roland's grant of land, citing the fact that
Speaker 1: his buffoonery was indecent. But Alan also notes that some
Speaker 1: things about the timeline don't really add up. These chronicles
Speaker 1: would have role in the Farter having a career that
Speaker 1: was like a hundred and twenty years long or more so.
Speaker 1: Something about the story is probably garbled or wrong, but
Speaker 1: there does appear to be some kind of historical core
Speaker 1: to it. We do think there was a role in
Speaker 1: the Farter who farted for his bread and butter. Huh. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if this is near speculation on my part,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if it could have been more of
Speaker 1: a role. It's kind of like bos the clown or
Speaker 1: you know, you could have different actors playing Roland the Farter,
Speaker 1: and therefore he could live for the doctor. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, every time the doctor disappears, you have a
Speaker 1: new role in the farther time Lord shows up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the basic that basic transformation scene, except with farting sounds
Speaker 1: at it. Get on at Hollywood. I want to see
Speaker 1: the Roland Roland of the Farter chronicles. All right, I
Speaker 1: think we should take a quick break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back we will look at the science of flatulence.
Speaker 1: Thank thank Alright, we're back. So what exactly is flatulence?
Speaker 1: Tell me, Robert, Well, when you you boil it down
Speaker 1: to just the basics, it's gas produced during digestion, and
Speaker 1: flat us only applies to gas expelled through the anus.
Speaker 1: So not the cloaco or a specialized glander duck. We're
Speaker 1: talking about gas from your anus or the anus of
Speaker 1: any anally empowered animal. Because, of course, as we we
Speaker 1: discussed on our our Anus episode, which I'll link to
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind dot com, there's always more, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: always more content out there. But as we mentioned in that, uh,
Speaker 1: not every creature has an anus. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: it should also be noted that not every animal farts,
Speaker 1: and we will get back to that truth as well.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about the composition of the average two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so how much does the average person fart? All right?
Speaker 1: So I'm sure people out there are wondering, like I
Speaker 1: am I farting too much? Not enough? I've got to know,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, And you know, it is one of those
Speaker 1: things that's probably difficult for most people to gauge because
Speaker 1: it's depending on, like I guess your what kind of
Speaker 1: household you grew up in, and what sort of culture
Speaker 1: you're a part of. Uh. Sometimes farting is something that
Speaker 1: must be done in secret, uh and blamed upon children
Speaker 1: and animals. But apparently the average person, Uh, let's ripped
Speaker 1: between five hundred and two thousand mill leaders of gas
Speaker 1: per day, and each bout is likely to be thirty
Speaker 1: five to nine million leaders. Okay, just did some extremely
Speaker 1: rough math on that, and it looks like that would
Speaker 1: average out to about twenty farts a day on average
Speaker 1: if you go for the middle of those ranges. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I would be curious to hear from listeners who want
Speaker 1: to uh speak truth to that number. Does that line
Speaker 1: up with your experience? What do you think? Uh? Incidentally,
Speaker 1: I also have run across um uh some material in
Speaker 1: the past that spoke to at least in uh in
Speaker 1: some cultures and maybe all cultures. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: the you're gonna have different volumes with with men and
Speaker 1: women depending on is it is it seemed more proper
Speaker 1: for men to regularly pass gas versus women, and therefore
Speaker 1: women might um contain themselves more than the men. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how that research actually lines up with our
Speaker 1: figures here, though. Is there far injustice being done? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean again, we come back to the basic reality
Speaker 1: that this is something that everybody's body does. So, according
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey Klueger, writing for Discover magazine in nineteen and
Speaker 1: fabulous eye article in which is primary source is gastro
Speaker 1: inturologist and two thousand thirteen Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt,
Speaker 1: who will keep coming back to because Levitt is a
Speaker 1: big name in the fart science community. Yes, but according
Speaker 1: to this article of flatus is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
Speaker 1: and methane. I read somewhere that among some people tested,
Speaker 1: the nitrogen seemed to be the greatest component by volume. Okay,
Speaker 1: And these are all either swallowed in or with the
Speaker 1: food or released during digestion. Now this is all odorless,
Speaker 1: is the interesting part to consider here. Even the methane,
Speaker 1: the remaining one percent of the composition is to blame
Speaker 1: for the smell, and it's the byproduct of the microbe
Speaker 1: legions that live in your gut aiding in your digestion.
Speaker 1: That one percent is their waste gas. So yeah, what
Speaker 1: exactly are these odor carrying compounds? And by god, there's
Speaker 1: a study on that. So this is a study by Suarez,
Speaker 1: Springfield and Levett, the same levet we mentioned earlier called
Speaker 1: Identification of Gases responsible for the Odor of humanflate us
Speaker 1: and Evaluation of a Device purported to reduce this odor
Speaker 1: published in Gut and so I've not heard of the
Speaker 1: journal Gut before. That's great, Yeah, all your gut needs
Speaker 1: met in one place. So they took sixteen healthy subjects
Speaker 1: and fed them pinto beans and stool softener and hooked
Speaker 1: them up to quote rectal tubes. Getting off to a
Speaker 1: good start. So results results were that most but not
Speaker 1: quite all, of the malodorous compounds and humanflate us were
Speaker 1: sulfur based compounds, and the following were the major sulfur
Speaker 1: compounds detected yet hydrogen sulfide, which has a rotten eggs smell,
Speaker 1: and it's associated with the microbial breakdown of organic matter
Speaker 1: in an oxygen free environment. So if you've ever had
Speaker 1: that really bad microbial decomposition smell, it's often coming from
Speaker 1: some kind of anaerobic source. It's breakdown occurring where there's
Speaker 1: no oxygen in the breakdown area, and it's it's producing
Speaker 1: these horrible sulfurous by products. And this was followed by
Speaker 1: methane thiol, which is sometimes described as the smell of
Speaker 1: rotten cabbage and it's a major component of bad breath,
Speaker 1: and then also by dimethyl sulfide, which has a strong
Speaker 1: bad smell, also sometimes described as cabbage like. In fact,
Speaker 1: I've read that it's produced when you boil cabbage. So
Speaker 1: part of the bad smell of boiled cabbage is going
Speaker 1: to be this stuff dimethyl sulfide, but it's also in
Speaker 1: lower concentration when paired with other smells. One of the
Speaker 1: major components of the smell we identify as the smell
Speaker 1: of the ocean, which is funny because when you think
Speaker 1: about the smell of the sea, it's one of those
Speaker 1: that that's kind of sitting on the fence between a
Speaker 1: good smell and a bad smell, right, Like, it's kind
Speaker 1: of by context really exactly, it's kind of nice, but
Speaker 1: it can also get kind of kind of foul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it's when you're actually at the ocean. You
Speaker 1: know that you have you have all the other sensory
Speaker 1: information to to skew it into a more positive place
Speaker 1: and in a definite uh oceanic vibe. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like the whole like like cheese versus smelly shoes or
Speaker 1: smelly socks situation, where oftentimes you're essentially talking about a
Speaker 1: very similar odor, but when associated with the shoes it
Speaker 1: is gross but when associated with a particular cheese. If
Speaker 1: you are a cheese eater, then it will excite you.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point of comparison. Now, so
Speaker 1: the human judges in judging the malodorous nous of different farts,
Speaker 1: they apparently were able to significantly correlate the worst smelling
Speaker 1: farts with hydrogen sulfide concentration. So it seems like the
Speaker 1: more hydrogen sulfide is in the flate us, the worse
Speaker 1: it smells. Now. As a side note, the study also
Speaker 1: looked at a couple of methods for eliminating the odor
Speaker 1: of flate us quote. Odor intensity was all so determined
Speaker 1: after treatment of flatus samples with zinc acetate which binds
Speaker 1: sulfidril compounds hydrogen sulfide and methane thiol, or activated charcoal
Speaker 1: utilizing gas type milar pantaloons, yes, gas type milar pantaloons.
Speaker 1: The ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulfur
Speaker 1: containing gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed,
Speaker 1: and what they found was the activated charcoal anus cushion
Speaker 1: worked best and it adsorbed more than of the sulfur
Speaker 1: based gases. So if you want your farts to not stink,
Speaker 1: you can use an activated charcoal anus cushion and it
Speaker 1: will apparently work pretty darn well. How come that's not
Speaker 1: a standard feature in these, uh, these various underwears that
Speaker 1: one can order online these days. I think maybe there
Speaker 1: actually is underwear you can get like that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it uses activated charcoal, but there are I've
Speaker 1: seen advertisements for underwear that is supposed to get it
Speaker 1: of the bad smell of farts, and I don't know
Speaker 1: how effective it is or what it's made out of,
Speaker 1: but I know I've seen that before. Interesting, Now, Robert,
Speaker 1: here's a question I've got. I know people are very
Speaker 1: often prone to link the prevalence of farts and the
Speaker 1: bad smell of farts to certain elements in the diet.
Speaker 1: But when people talk about this, it sounds completely random
Speaker 1: to me. It sounds like they're just making up one
Speaker 1: thing or another because there's no consistency whatsoever, and what
Speaker 1: people say leads to lots of farts or bad smelling farts,
Speaker 1: except maybe beans. Well, even here's the thing to write
Speaker 1: anything that you any particular food you associate with a
Speaker 1: fart to speak of it? Uh, thus lee is humorous,
Speaker 1: so that if you were to say, oh, man, someone's
Speaker 1: got the tutsie rold toots today, or I have a
Speaker 1: bad case of the beef farts, huh uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it actually gets funnier. I think the more mundane the
Speaker 1: food you say, is like, oh, you know, Terry's got
Speaker 1: bread farts over here. Yeah, there's there's nothing that isn't funny.
Speaker 1: But as it turns out, there there is a science
Speaker 1: to what's going on here, and we can classify our
Speaker 1: foods into different twot categories. The more complex the carbohydrates
Speaker 1: in your diet, the more pungent the odor is likely
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, so meat, fish, nuts, and berries not
Speaker 1: too much to worry about. Citrus, bread and potatoes. Those
Speaker 1: are full of complex sugars. Uh, So you get a
Speaker 1: two tier consistency. And then the beans, bananas and milk
Speaker 1: food such as this. That's where you really in your
Speaker 1: fart city. And this is because the more complex carbohydrates
Speaker 1: are more difficult to break down, requiring more work in
Speaker 1: the lower regions of the bowels. In general, however, it's
Speaker 1: not only the creatures diet that's gonna be a major factor,
Speaker 1: but also the specific gut floor that they have the
Speaker 1: specific you know, microbes that are residing within them to
Speaker 1: aid in their digestion. But then then also overall health
Speaker 1: of the individual. So these gonna care after. These are
Speaker 1: gonna influence not only the character but the volume of
Speaker 1: the toots and high fiber diets. They have a lot
Speaker 1: of veggies in them. For instance, these have been linked
Speaker 1: to increased of flashlens as well as have dairy starch
Speaker 1: and fructose. That's interesting. I mean, not knowing anything going in,
Speaker 1: I might have assumed, Hey, who's going to fart the most?
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe people who eat a lot of meat. No,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the curse of the vegetarian. But but
Speaker 1: also Brussels sprouts and meat are also examples of foods
Speaker 1: with high concentrations of sulfur leading to the production of
Speaker 1: that hydrogen sulfide that we've mentioned already, the smell of
Speaker 1: rotten eggs. But also hey, the smell of fire and brimstone. Oh,
Speaker 1: that brings us right back to the demonic associations. I wonder,
Speaker 1: I wonder now speaking of fire and brimstone, Mary Wroach
Speaker 1: actually breaks down the flammable components of platist in her
Speaker 1: excellent book Gulp Adventures in the Alimentary Canal. Uh this
Speaker 1: is this is a fabulous book. I've mentioned on the
Speaker 1: show before. H and and Mary does have a close
Speaker 1: job exploring fart science and at least two different books
Speaker 1: that she's written. So here's some of the facts. Methane
Speaker 1: and hydrogen are explosive in concentrations higher than four to
Speaker 1: five percent, and then up to plates is hydrogen. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder how that compares to what I read that
Speaker 1: a major component is nitrogen. I guess maybe it's got
Speaker 1: to be highly variable, right, I imagine. So now we've
Speaker 1: all heard tales of lighted farts, and if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you might have seen it done on stage that at
Speaker 1: an Atlanta improv show. Do not take that as an
Speaker 1: endorsement of this behavior. This podcast is not recommending lighting farts,
Speaker 1: which is actually seriously dangerous behavior, right and you and
Speaker 1: you will see why it's dangerous as we roll out
Speaker 1: some of the details. Um but but Roachhe does describe
Speaker 1: a few of the more harrowing cases of flate is fire,
Speaker 1: such as the fatal ninety seven mishap during a colonic
Speaker 1: polypectomy that is the surgical removal of polyps from the colon. Wow,
Speaker 1: how did this happen? So the gastro intrologist here was
Speaker 1: using electrocoagulation to cut to cut down on bleeding, and
Speaker 1: about eight seconds into the procedure there was an explosion.
Speaker 1: The patient's body jerked on the table. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: the the colonoscope was quote completely ejected from the body,
Speaker 1: which Mary interprets is essentially it was launched out of
Speaker 1: the anus by the explosion. It is horrifying, yeah, But
Speaker 1: basically what happened is that there is there the gas
Speaker 1: in the colon was flammable, and the the the electro
Speaker 1: cauterization device touched it off and bammo. This is why
Speaker 1: Roach says there's so much overkill in pre colonoscopy bowel cleansing.
Speaker 1: The patient in this case had followed the pre surgical instructions.
Speaker 1: He'd taken the laxative manitol to clear everything out. But
Speaker 1: but while there was no fecal matter inside of him,
Speaker 1: there was gas. Now important note here manitol is not
Speaker 1: used anymore. So Mary Road churches everyone not to worry
Speaker 1: about exploding during a colonoscopy. Uh. And she she also
Speaker 1: points out that doctors will blow air or carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: which is non flammable, into the colon as they work.
Speaker 1: Quote Inflating the colon also helps them see what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Air creates the magnificent billowing flatulence that rings through the
Speaker 1: colonoscopy recovery room. I've never considered that. Apparently it's a thing.
Speaker 1: If only the Fart Battle illustrators had known, I know,
Speaker 1: it would be a much more fiery affair right unexplored
Speaker 1: territory here. So some of you might be wondering, well, heck,
Speaker 1: if there is a lethal amount of gas in my
Speaker 1: colon right now, should I be afraid? Should I? Should
Speaker 1: I step away from campfires? Etcetera? And uh Roach says,
Speaker 1: don't worry. Basically, so the hydrogen and methane dilutes as
Speaker 1: you pass gas, so basically as it comes out into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, very quickly disperses and enters the concentration. That's
Speaker 1: not dangerous. That's right to light of fart. And again
Speaker 1: we do not encourage you to do so. You'd have
Speaker 1: to hold the match. So the flame made contact with
Speaker 1: the gas the second it left the body too close
Speaker 1: for comfort. In other words, I feel like the commercial
Speaker 1: like showing people skateboarding. Do not attempt, do not attempt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't drive that home enough here. Oh and I
Speaker 1: have to mention this this section from from from the
Speaker 1: book Gulp as well, because roach chats with University of
Speaker 1: Alabama's Stephen Secor. Uh. If you look him up, he's
Speaker 1: almost always draped in a serpent, which is which is
Speaker 1: an encouraging sign of a biologist. And Secor has this
Speaker 1: interesting theory regarding the myth of the of the fire
Speaker 1: breathing dragon. So imagine this. Imagine us the sort of
Speaker 1: gas a large snake would generate snakes too far? Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that they do. And so this would be like a
Speaker 1: python or a constrictor. Right now, imagine in that inside
Speaker 1: that snake of a vegetation gorged mammal that is also decomposing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like snake eats a ruminant herbivore, right, that's that
Speaker 1: that itself had just previously eaten a whole bunch of grass.
Speaker 1: Now bear in mind that many plant eaters lacking rumans
Speaker 1: have a seesome. There's a pouch between the small intestines
Speaker 1: and the colon, and animals like rabbits have extra large ones.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing is that pythons and boas do
Speaker 1: as well, not for the plants they're not eating, but
Speaker 1: for the plant eaters that they're gobbled and gobbling down whole.
Speaker 1: So that's quite a lot of methane building up in there.
Speaker 1: So imagine some prehistoric hunters dragging a gorge snake homb
Speaker 1: to the campfire. You know, something that's just thick with
Speaker 1: its recent meal, some sort of whole large herbivore just
Speaker 1: lodged in its being broken down. So the hunters dragged
Speaker 1: this back to the campfire and they PLoP it down
Speaker 1: in front of the fire hard enough to blast the
Speaker 1: creature's mouth open and then hush this brilliant burst of flame.
Speaker 1: I will say that as a highly contrived scenario, but
Speaker 1: I like it nonetheless. Yeah, it's it's it's beautiful in
Speaker 1: its own way. Now I mentioned that Mary Roach has
Speaker 1: more than one book that explores the science of flatus.
Speaker 1: The other is Packing for Mars, which is because this
Speaker 1: actually matters in space. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a
Speaker 1: big it's a big deal. Um. She She explores the
Speaker 1: threat of of NASA fart studies in a couple of
Speaker 1: her books, and these are just a couple of the
Speaker 1: choice nuggets. Here she mentions that Edwin Murphy researched unquote
Speaker 1: experimental bean meal fed to volunteers who had been rigged
Speaker 1: via erectal catheter to out gas into a measurement device. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was interested in individual differences, not just in the
Speaker 1: overall volume of latest, but in the differing percentages of
Speaker 1: the gases and owing to differences in intestinal bacteria. Half
Speaker 1: the population produced no methane. No methane. Yeah, no methane
Speaker 1: and this so this would make them attractive as astronauts.
Speaker 1: But I can also see this can make them a
Speaker 1: target of chauvinistic attitudes about how real farts contain methane. True,
Speaker 1: but Murphy even reported that he had found an individual
Speaker 1: who was flate is free. So here's a quote. I
Speaker 1: don't believe that. Yoh, well, I don't know. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's a tough pill to swallow. But here's the quote
Speaker 1: of special of special interest for further research was the
Speaker 1: subject who produced essentially no flateust on one grams dry
Speaker 1: weight of beans. So he suggested that the astronauts be
Speaker 1: selected from quote that part of our population producing little
Speaker 1: or no methane or hydrogen now. Also, it's it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that NASA used to keep our flatest expert and
Speaker 1: again future Nobel Prize winner biophysicist Michael Levitt on retainer
Speaker 1: as a consultant, and he ruled that the capsules uh
Speaker 1: that they were using at the time were large enough
Speaker 1: and and well circulated enough to prevent the dangerous concentrations
Speaker 1: of gas from building up. God, can you imagine that
Speaker 1: being the requirement though? That shut you down to become
Speaker 1: an astronaut. So it's like you've ever since you're a
Speaker 1: little kid, you've trained, you've worked hard in school, you've
Speaker 1: worked hard to stay fit. You you're ready to go
Speaker 1: to space. You're in perfect shape, you know all the astrophysics,
Speaker 1: you've been a test pilot, god knows what else, and
Speaker 1: you're ready to be an astronaut. And they put a
Speaker 1: rectal tube in you and they say, I'm sorry, you
Speaker 1: produced too much flat us. You can't go to Mars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like you're super qualified, but your fart so weird.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Now, you know, in the past, we've we've
Speaker 1: talked about the prospect of genetically engineering astronauts, and of
Speaker 1: course the main objectives here would be, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: to make them more resistant to UH solar and cosmic radiation,
Speaker 1: or or make them resistant to microgravity bone loss. But
Speaker 1: perhaps we also want to ensure a fart free, space
Speaker 1: faring human uh, either via genetic changed in the individual
Speaker 1: or manipulation or genetic engineering of gut flora itself. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that could be a thing. I mean, I wonder
Speaker 1: if one way to do that would be not so
Speaker 1: much through genetic engineering from birth, but through say, like
Speaker 1: fecal transplants. Yeah, to change the gut flora profile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean really, there's there's so much left to learn
Speaker 1: about the the connection between our gut flora uh and
Speaker 1: other aspects of our health, not only physical health, but
Speaker 1: even mental health. I believe we've talked about this on
Speaker 1: the show before, the idea that in the future, one
Speaker 1: of the treatments for certain cases of say, depression, might
Speaker 1: be treatable via something like a fecal transplant. Yes. Some
Speaker 1: of the amazing implication of gut flora for all kinds
Speaker 1: of body health up and down the line are discussed
Speaker 1: in that great book I recommended a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: Ed Young's I contain multitudes, which is all about the
Speaker 1: It's about microbes and the microbiome, and it's just fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, the dimensions of ramifications posed by gut flora
Speaker 1: within humans specifically, but microbes all around us generally are
Speaker 1: are just unbelievable. Alright, Well, on that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take another break, and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss some of the notable toots of the
Speaker 1: animal Kingdom. Thank alright, we're back now, Robert. There is
Speaker 1: a book that I know you have been super psyched
Speaker 1: about ever since we got a copy. Yes, uh, and
Speaker 1: I've actually just in the past couple of days we
Speaker 1: decided to do this episode first, But since then I've
Speaker 1: noticed in the past couple of days on the Internet
Speaker 1: other people are catching onto this book. It's making a buzz,
Speaker 1: that's right. The name of the book is Does It Art?
Speaker 1: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence by Nick Caruso
Speaker 1: and Danny Rabbiotti, illustrated by Ethan co Chak. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's been a bit of a hit in my household
Speaker 1: thus far as you can. This is one of those
Speaker 1: books that you can just flip through it land on
Speaker 1: any particular page and there'll be a profile of a
Speaker 1: specific animal. It's it's very easily digestible, Yes, very easily digestible.
Speaker 1: It has some just delightful illustrations. Uh. And I've been
Speaker 1: reading sections of it to my wife, to my five
Speaker 1: year old son, to myself, and it's it's tremendous fun.
Speaker 1: So I highly recommend getting a copy of this. I'll
Speaker 1: make sure there's a link to it on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode is Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot Com. Well, let's talk about a few examples, all right.
Speaker 1: Well first, uh, yeah, a few examples of just exceptional
Speaker 1: tutors in the animal kingdom. Uh. The first one I
Speaker 1: want to profile here is the West Indian manateee. I
Speaker 1: was really impressed with this one because we've just gust
Speaker 1: manatees a couple of times on the podcast this year,
Speaker 1: and I've I've recently got to see some both in
Speaker 1: the wild and in an aquarium setting. But I had
Speaker 1: not heard this particular tidbit the authors point out. They
Speaker 1: quote the manatees and testines have small pouches throughout that
Speaker 1: allow for gas storage. This unusual anatomy allows the West
Speaker 1: Indian manatee to manipulate its farts as a mechanism for buoyancy.
Speaker 1: By storing gas within specific areas of their intestines, manatees
Speaker 1: can make their bodies more buoyant and float towards the surface,
Speaker 1: while the compression and release of flatulence makes these animals
Speaker 1: sink amazing. Yeah, so they're there. It's it's almost like
Speaker 1: they're these these fart powered blimps flying, you know, through
Speaker 1: the ocean. Uh. And they point out that, in fact,
Speaker 1: if if a manatee is constipated, it screws everything up
Speaker 1: and they'll often float with their tail too high because
Speaker 1: there's too much gas built up there. Throws off the buoyancy.
Speaker 1: You know. I was flip them through this morning and
Speaker 1: I found a section on iguanas, and so I was
Speaker 1: that that intrigued me Iguanas. Sometimes they've got this look
Speaker 1: in their face like I don't fart. They don't look
Speaker 1: a little proud. Yeah. Yeah, but they're they're lying. They're
Speaker 1: lying to you, because iguanas do fart, like geckos and
Speaker 1: other lizards, they fart. The Rhinoceros iguana or Cyclora cornuta,
Speaker 1: they apparently tend to produce quote wet sounding farts. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they fart more when they have high fiber diets
Speaker 1: that makes sense, or lots of parasitic infestation. Green iguanas,
Speaker 1: which are popular pets, are herbivorous, which means more farts,
Speaker 1: and iguana owners have actually commented pretty often that their
Speaker 1: lizards produce loud farts during defecation. One that I found
Speaker 1: interesting was the termite. You don't You might not think
Speaker 1: about farting termites, but here's the thing. They're kind of
Speaker 1: super farters and according to the authors here, they produce
Speaker 1: five to nineteen per and of global methane emissions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or is that possible? Or point to seven percent of
Speaker 1: greenhouse emissions hermites, Yeah, amazing, Yeah, just in there, munch
Speaker 1: inwood and tuting. Now they also get into dinosaurs a
Speaker 1: little bit, specifically talking about sauropods. So as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: birds do not fart, so it's possible that they're dino
Speaker 1: ancestors did not either. But sara pods, however, these are
Speaker 1: the you know, the gigantic uh, plant eating engines of
Speaker 1: of prehistoric times. They likely depended on hindgut fermentation to
Speaker 1: break down those massive meals, resulting in quite a bit
Speaker 1: of gas. The author's point to one studies estimate of
Speaker 1: one point nine kgms of methane per sauropod per day. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of methane producing herbivores, I think we should look
Speaker 1: at the cow. Yes, there's actually a section on the
Speaker 1: cow in this book, but I also did some extra
Speaker 1: research on the cow because obviously the cow farts. But
Speaker 1: you might be surprised to find out how because you
Speaker 1: might have heard that, for example, cows are a major
Speaker 1: source of greenhouse gas emissions. And whether that's true defend
Speaker 1: depends on how you define major. But it is true
Speaker 1: that methane and other gas emissions do contribute to climate change.
Speaker 1: There was a fourteen report produced by the UN Food
Speaker 1: and Agriculture Organization and it estimated that in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: methane emissions from livestock accounted for thirty nine percent of
Speaker 1: all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Now that's from agriculture,
Speaker 1: not thirty nine percent of total emissions from all sources.
Speaker 1: And just to put that in context, according to an
Speaker 1: analysis by the U s d a UH, they estimated
Speaker 1: that agriculture accounts for about ten percent of US greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions, so i'd be thirty nine percent of ten percent.
Speaker 1: And among that thirty nine percent of agricultural emissions produced
Speaker 1: by livestock, a full seventy four percent came from cattle.
Speaker 1: There was fifty five percent from beef cattle, and nineteen
Speaker 1: percent from dairy cattle, and the rest were from things
Speaker 1: like buffalo and sheep and goats. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: this gas production comes down to the cows. Herbivorous diet
Speaker 1: and digestion method, which Caruso and Rabbiati say can produce
Speaker 1: between a hundred and two ms of methane emissions per
Speaker 1: cow per year. And when you're measuring in kilograms, you're
Speaker 1: you're thinking about a gas So it's like that much
Speaker 1: gas weighing that much. It's kind of hard to fathom.
Speaker 1: But you might have often heard this idea or this
Speaker 1: line of thinking summarized as Wow, cow farts are really
Speaker 1: contributing to climate change. Although cows do fart, the majority
Speaker 1: of their emissions comes here's the kicker, not from farts,
Speaker 1: but through the other end of the cow, straight out
Speaker 1: the mouth. So cows expel a great deal of methane
Speaker 1: through burps and through simple exhalation when they were when
Speaker 1: they're breathing, and some researchers think cow emissions can be
Speaker 1: curbed by altering their diet in targeted ways, such as
Speaker 1: like feeding them different types of seaweed that inhibit production
Speaker 1: of gut methane. But they've got this ruminant digestion method, right,
Speaker 1: and so they end up just spitting out a lot
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide, methane and greenhouse gasses from the mouth.
Speaker 1: H Well, you know that leads in nicely to the
Speaker 1: first of a few notable abstainers we're going to mention
Speaker 1: here from the book. Does it fart? You mean animals
Speaker 1: that do not fart, Yeah, or may not fart in
Speaker 1: some cases that the science is still out. But the
Speaker 1: first is the sloth. So sloth, I don't believe it
Speaker 1: slows must fart. You just look into their sort of
Speaker 1: lazy eyes and you just assume that there's some farts
Speaker 1: going on. My ignorant intuition trumps any science on this matter.
Speaker 1: I know sloths fart, all right. Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: According to the author's sloths, of course, are famously slow,
Speaker 1: and they boast incredibly slow digestion. As many as five
Speaker 1: days can pass between their poops at which time, of course,
Speaker 1: they often climb down from the tree quint canopy to
Speaker 1: do their defecation. And they have an incredibly lead he
Speaker 1: diet as well, and simplified gut flora that doesn't produce flatus,
Speaker 1: it produces methane. But the methane is absorbed in the
Speaker 1: sloth's blood and is breathed out. Wow. So the takeaways here, Uh,
Speaker 1: swaths maybe the only mammals that don't fart. We'll discuss
Speaker 1: another possible mammal or variety of mammal on a second.
Speaker 1: And it also gives me hope that the giant swath
Speaker 1: megathereum breathed fire. Oh along the lines of the dead snake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like maybe it was. I'm not sure how it would
Speaker 1: get that spark. The spark is the hard part. But
Speaker 1: if you have a giant sloth breathing out a bunch
Speaker 1: of methane, then there's there's hope for fire breathing. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to imagine how it would happen. What would you have,
Speaker 1: Like you'd have a megatherium who had a symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: with some kind of commencil bombardier beetle. Maybe that like
Speaker 1: spit some kind of hot compound in front of its
Speaker 1: mouth right as it was exhaling, and then you got
Speaker 1: the fire coming out. Yeah, I'm trying. Yeah, or I
Speaker 1: don't know, some sort of like uh, you know, flint
Speaker 1: based like scraping of rocks. I get carries them around
Speaker 1: in its mouth. But we're getting into dragon territory on this. Well,
Speaker 1: you mentioned another mammal doesn't fart, or at least possibly
Speaker 1: doesn't fart. I want to know what that is, all right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this would be and that this is an open question,
Speaker 1: but possibly the bat. So they're mammals, and so they
Speaker 1: have the right gut bacteria to produce flatus, but their
Speaker 1: digestion is rather speedy to cut down on weight for flight.
Speaker 1: The authors point out that even the largest species of bat,
Speaker 1: the so called flying fox fruit bat, has a mouth
Speaker 1: to anus digestion time of twelve to thirty four minutes.
Speaker 1: That's crazy that that is fast. And also, if you've
Speaker 1: never seen what a flying fox fruit bat looks like,
Speaker 1: just look up a flying fox. These things are too
Speaker 1: big to have wings, or at least too big to
Speaker 1: be mammals to have wings. I guess there might be
Speaker 1: bigger birds I don't know. They're huge. They are very
Speaker 1: sizeable creatures. And the idea that they're digesting their food
Speaker 1: and around thirty minutes or less is incredible. One. When
Speaker 1: you see a flying fox hanging upside down, you're kind
Speaker 1: of tempted to think that this could be the inspiration
Speaker 1: for like the idea of bats as vampires, because they
Speaker 1: don't they look kind of like people. Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: this like humanoid like, like a lupine appearance. Now, the
Speaker 1: other major category of note here are the birds. Birds
Speaker 1: don't fart. They have all the right, you know, bits
Speaker 1: of their anatomy, but they lack the gut bacteria to
Speaker 1: produce the gas. So the authors of Does It Fart?
Speaker 1: They mentioned a nineteen sixty three observation by a Cornell
Speaker 1: graduate student by the name of Alan Richard vice Broad,
Speaker 1: who described a quote small puff of whitish gas uh
Speaker 1: during a blue jay's defecation, but experts later They they
Speaker 1: argue that like, you were basically just observing warm water
Speaker 1: vapor in the cool air, and this was not a fart.
Speaker 1: It's like when you can see your breath, right, that's
Speaker 1: not a fart. Yeah, I mean, really, when you come
Speaker 1: down to the like the sign sientific observation of farts,
Speaker 1: like that's how do you how do you see that?
Speaker 1: It's kind of like trying to see a ghost. That's
Speaker 1: why you have to have rectal tubes and whatnot? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there really a reason to inflict rectal tubes on
Speaker 1: blue jays? No? I mean, especially since everyone seems to
Speaker 1: agree that birds do not fart, So let's not go
Speaker 1: inserting any tubes that aren't strictly necessary for science. Robert,
Speaker 1: this has been such a wonderful exploration, it has This
Speaker 1: has been a fun one. We got from demons to
Speaker 1: jesters to sloths. I don't know how this happened, but
Speaker 1: it happened. And here we are closing the fabled fartonomicon,
Speaker 1: at least for now. Uh. We would ask our listeners, Hey,
Speaker 1: would you like to hear more about the science of farts?
Speaker 1: Uh than let us know? Maybe maybe there's more. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's more, A deeper dive into a medieval fart
Speaker 1: literature perhaps, Uh. And also I'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: any of those near toothless individuals that we referenced earlier.
Speaker 1: Are you one of those rare individ jewels who produces
Speaker 1: a little or no uh um, hydrogen or methane in
Speaker 1: your flatus? Are you in space right now? Let us
Speaker 1: know we would love to hear from you. We're just
Speaker 1: inviting people to lie to us. Yeah, I don't fart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder how much lying is perpetrated around flash Lens.
Speaker 1: It has to be one of the major contributors, surely, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Hey. In the meantime, go to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the
Speaker 1: episodes of the podcast, including this one, with links to
Speaker 1: some of these books we were referencing. Also, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and put together some sort of a gallery
Speaker 1: to go along with this episode, because we've referenced some
Speaker 1: fabulous works of art here. Maybe I can collect a
Speaker 1: few examples for you. Uh and hey, it's Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. You'll also find links going
Speaker 1: out to our various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: et CETERA. Huge thank you as always to our wonderful
Speaker 1: audio producers Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us to let us
Speaker 1: know your feedback on this episode or any other, or
Speaker 1: do you suggest a topic for a future show, or
Speaker 1: just to say hi. You can always email us at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Here, you, great demons of Hell,
Speaker 1: watch over us, your disciples. We dedicate ourselves to your
Speaker 1: service and accept your might and dominion. We call upon
Speaker 1: your infernal names Satan, Beelzebub, flid asterak Fartha, met Toots
Speaker 1: for real Zies, Barbara Rigmus, Crepitus, rip One, and toots Afer.
Speaker 1: Arise from the depths of thy cosmic privy, and give
Speaker 1: us a sign of thy power.