Did you know that the world’s first recorded joke was a fart joke? Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy,
editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com. Bathroom humor has a long history. In 2008, researchers
at England’s University of Wolverhampton identified an ancient joke, about a woman
who may or may not have tooted in her husband’s lap, and traced it all the way back to 1900
BCE. The Sumerian quip is delivered as follows: “Something which has never occurred since
time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” Hey, we said the
joke was old—not funny.
And that’s just the first of many fascinating, hilarious, and silent but deadly facts about
farts that I’m going to share with you today.
If you’ve ever encountered one of those people who swears up and down that they don’t
fart, they’re lying. And you can tell them we said so. If you’re a human being who
breathes, you’re a human being who breaks wind—gas is essentially the byproduct of
the air you swallow mixing with the (generally healthy) bacteria and other organic compounds
in your large intestine, then finding its way out of your body via your rear-end. In
other words: everyone farts. Accept it. Embrace it.
Besides, farts can be delicious. OK, let me explain. A popular English delicacy during
the Tudor era were Farts of Portingale. According to one 16th century cookbook, making the dish
required mincing mutton, seasoning it, rolling it into little balls, and then cooking them
in beef broth. So basically meatballs. But don’t worry—the two farts are etymologically
unrelated.
If you want to avoid any ambiguity with your friends who love Tudor-era English cuisine,
you’ll want to use the proper medical term for a fart: flatus. It comes from the Latin
word meaning the act of blowing. The first known use of the word occurred in 1651 and
is simply defined as “gas generated in the stomach or bowels.” If you want to take
your toot talk up one notch further, try using borborygmus: That’s the word gastroenterologists
use to describe the rumbling noise your stomach makes when you’ve got some gas brewing.
So just how much squeezing cheese is normal? Typically, adults produce about two pints
of gas each day, which sneaks—or leaks—out via an average of 14 farts a day. If that
number seems low to you, don't worry. It's apparently perfectly normal to pass gas up
to 21 times a day. Though it does sound exhausting.
Ninety-nine percent of what constitutes a toot has no smell at all. It’s made up of
nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and methane—all of which are odorless. It’s
generally when sulfur makes its way into the mix, mainly via the foods you eat—think
broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and dairy products—that things start to stink.
No matter how sly you think you may be, you cannot “hold in” a fart. Sure, they can
rumble to the surface at inopportune moments and you can often comport your body in certain
ways to prevent the little guy from screeching out, but that gas will escape. If you’re
lucky, it will do so quietly and over an extended period of time to give you the best chance
of not being suspected as the one who dealt it. But if you’re not so lucky, holding
in a stinker could force it to come tumbling out louder than it would have in the first
place. According to Clare Collins, a professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Newcastle,
So think carefully when making flatulence-dependent
decisions.
If you’re truly cursed, holding in a tail scudder for too long could mean that the gas
will be reabsorbed into your circulation system and could be released out of your mouth. Let
me repeat that: If you hold in a fart too long, it could actually LEAK OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!
Do not take any chances. Unleash the air biscuit.
Just as it’s considered rude to pass gas in public, the word fart itself has long been
considered a vulgarism, making it impolite to talk about bottom burps in certain company.
But that didn’t stop some of history’s most celebrated thinkers from writing about
cutting the cheese. William Shakespeare was the master of the fart joke, as evidenced in
works like The Comedy of Errors, where the character Dromio of Ephesus says the following: “A
man may break a word with you, sir; and words are but wind; Ay, and break it in your face,
so he break it not behind.” And Geoffrey Chaucer had a character, quote, “let fly
a fart as loud as it had been a thunder-clap” in The Canterbury Tales. Dante’s The Inferno,
Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Mark Twain’s 1601, and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher In
The Rye are just a few other pieces of revered literature that waxed poetic about cheek squeaks.
Which clearly puts us in some pretty esteemed company.
James Joyce’s Ulysses is another classic that didn’t shy away from fart talk, but
Joyce himself took it one step further. He actually seemed to find something romantic
in breaking wind. When he wasn’t busy writing some of the most influential works of the
20th century, Joyce penned some pretty raunchy missives to Nora Barnacle, his wife and longtime
muse. In one letter, written in December of 1909, he used the word “fart” a total
of 10 times—and mostly in an X-rated context. He wrote, quote, “I think I would know Nora’s
fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women.” He described
it as a “rather girlish noise.”
If Joyce was particularly enthusiastic regarding his wife’s...unique emission...he wouldn’t
be entirely alone. Farting can be a fetish. Case studies—including a 2013 paper in the
Archives of Sexual Behavior—have been written about individuals who are aroused by flatulence—a
proclivity known as “eproctophilia.”
An obsession with squeakers isn’t always a fetish, though. In 1982, a pair of scientists
at Georgia State University published a case study in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and
Experimental Psychiatry about a 33-year-old respiratory therapist who could not rid her
mind of obsessive thoughts about roaring from the rear. In a rather unorthodox move, she
was instructed to “intensify flatus emissions” or, in laymen’s terms: when she had to pass
gas, she should just fart harder. This contradictory advice helped free her of the thoughts altogether.
In November 2016, Canadian Parliament argued about the appropriateness of using the word
“fart” on the chamber floor. We discussed the kerfuffle in our recent list of Things
That Will Make You Feel Better, but when you’re bringing together that rare marriage of flatulence
and parliamentary procedure, I think it’s worth a second mention. The debate erupted
after Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, in an impassioned speech, dared to ask, “Why
does the government treat Alberta like a fart in the room that nobody wants to talk about
or acknowledge?” Rather than answer her question, Green Party leader Elizabeth May
admonished Rempel, labeling her question “distinctly unparliamentary” and requesting that her
colleague withdraw the statement. May’s issue wasn’t with the political content
of the conversation—it was, in her words, the use of the word "f-a-r-t.” Yes,
she actually spelled it. Eventually, the Assistant Deputy Speaker broke out the House of Commons
Procedure and Practice rulebook, and read from the section on “unparliamentary language”
then declared that, quote,
And you thought political meetings were boring!
Canada isn’t the only place where politics and pant rippers have come together in an
explosive way. Gerald Ford supposedly had a reputation for using his Secret Service
agents as scapegoats for his trouser coughs. When the 38th President of the United States
would let one rip, he’s said to have regularly blamed it on one of his Secret Service agents,
very loudly saying things like “Jesus, was that you? Show some class!”
Ford may have gotten away with placing the responsibility for his errant crowd splitters
on his staffers, but not all bosses are lucky enough to be the leader of the free world.
Case in point: Greg Short was a supervisor at an engineering firm in Melbourne, Australia,
that got sued by David Hingst, a former employee, who claimed
that he was continually bullied by his boss—or, more specifically, his boss’s gassiness—during
the year he worked for the company. Hingst claimed that between May 2008 and April 2009,
Short would regularly amuse himself by coming into the windowless office, at which
point he would “lift his bum and fart.” Hingst sued for 1.8 million Australian dollars
in damages—equivalent to roughly 1.3 million USD. While Short denied being a serial fart
attacker, he did acknowledge it was possible that he had let a few go near Hingst. In any
case, the court sided with the company, deciding that hot boxing an office on occasion did
not rise to the level of harassment. Hingst vowed to appeal.
A couple of words of advice if you’re visiting Germany: If a police officer asks to see your
ID, do not fart at them in response. They hate that. In 2016, Berlin police
asked a group of people to show them some identification. One man floated a pair of
farts their way instead. The farter in question was fined 900 euros for disrespecting law
enforcement and started what became known as the "Crazy Toot Trial," which required
the participation of 23 law enforcement officials and prompted a huge debate over wasteful public
spending.
In the late 1800s, a French baker named Joseph Pujol would often entertain his customers
by sucking air into his rectum, then expelling it in such a way that he could actually imitate
different instruments and sounds. While not a fart in the most technical sense, Pujol
decided to take his act on the road. He adopted the stage name Le Pétomane—which combined
the French word for “to fart,” péter, with the suffix -mane, for maniac—and wowed
the crowds with his talent for passing wind at will. If you’d like to see a flatulist
perform for yourself, at least one is still around: England’s Mr. Methane, a.k.a. the
King of Farts.
And while some scientists dedicate their lives to curing diseases or figuring out the answers
to questions that have stumped us for years—like why we cry, laugh, or sleep—others have
devoted their knowledge to gastrointestinal distress. In 1991, gastroenterologists from the Human Gastrointestinal Physiology and Nutrition subdepartment
of the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffielld, England, published a paper in the trade journal Gut,
that attempted to answer perhaps the most important question of all: How much space does a fart take up?
To get to the bottom of the problem, they
fed 10 volunteers 200 grams of baked beans in addition to their regular diet, then used
rectal catheters to measure their flatulence over the next 24 hours. They determined that
the volume of the average fart—regardless of gender, body size, or time of day—was
between 33 and 125 ml, with a median of 90 ml, or about 3 fluid ounces. So roughly the
volume of an airport-approved travel bottle. Think of that the next time you’re packing
your toiletry bag for a trip.
Speaking of beans: You may have uttered that lasting legume-based poem, “Beans, beans,
the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot” at one point in your life. Well,
there may be something to that sing-songy refrain. A 2011 study in Nutrition Journal
comprised of three feeding studies found that some subjects who ate beans did see an increase
in gas compared to a control group. The increases seemed to taper off after some time, though,
and the paper’s authors argue that the health benefits of beans outweigh any temporary tooting.
Let’s discuss the term “silent but deadly.” You’ve probably used it to describe a fart
at some point in time, but firm scientific evidence establishing a relationship between
the loudness of a fart and its resulting smell is lacking. Which isn’t to say that you’ve
never experienced the horror that is an SBD—but if you want to tout a rigorously established
connection between smell and sound, you may need to fund the necessary research yourself.
We’ve all heard stories, or seen YouTube videos, of people lighting a fart on fire.
And yes, it’s true that a lit flame and a gaseous toot can make for an explosive combination.
But here’s another fun, science-y fart fact: If a person cuts the cheese in cold weather
with their pants down, it would likely be visible—in the same way that we can see
our breath in cold weather.
It's not your imagination—your farts really do smell worse in the shower. The lack of
clothing means there’s nothing to absorb the smell, and being in the shower means you’re
in an enclosed space, so there’s nowhere for that stink burger to go. Plus, there’s
some evidence that all that shower steam can actually enhance your sense of smell—which
all adds up to one seriously potent bun-shaker.
Believe it or not, there’s a possible downside to burping out the wrong end with no pants
on: getting someone sick. And not from the smell. Though it’s highly unlikely and would
take a very specific situation—namely, a person carrying a disease would have to remove
their pants and fart squarely at another person in rather close quarters—it is possible
for disease to be spread through gas.
But enough about gaseous humans for a moment—let’s talk about pets who fart. As anyone who has
a dog or cat knows, those adorably fuzzy little creatures can let off some serious stink bombs.
Yet we love them all the same ... even if we do feel the need to move to the other side
of the couch. (Sorry, Pearl.) But lots of animals fart, and for some of them, it can
be a genuine matter of life or death. The Bolson pupfish, a fish found in northern Mexico,
feeds on algae and can accidentally ingest the gas bubbles that algae produces in warm
temperatures. That becomes dangerous if the air finds its way into the fish’s intestines,
which makes it difficult for the fish to swim. If it doesn’t fart to remove the air, it’s
likely to die—either from being attacked by a predator when it floats to the top of
the water, or because the gas bubbles rupture its intestines. Frankly, neither of those
options sounds like a fun way to go.
One of the most notorious animal farters is the termite: They may be small in size, but
they live in colonies of millions. So when each termite lets a half microgram of methane
loose per day, it adds up to a lot: about 20 million tons of methane per year, or one
to three percent of global methane emissions.
But not every animal farts: It’s thought that octopuses don’t, nor do soft-shell
clams, sea anemones, or birds. Sloths don’t fart either—and they very well may be the
only mammal that does not.
Thanks to bogcom for cluing us in to the not-so-smell sloth situation.
Ok, back to air biscuits of the human variety. If you swear that your gas smells less offensive
than anyone else’s, you’re not alone. The more exposed and familiar we are with
something, the more likely we are to prefer it. This goes for music, art, and, yes, even
thunder from down under. Which means that while your farts may not register a blip on
your own smell detector, the same can’t necessarily be said for those within the odor’s
vicinity. Your brain may also anticipate an odor when it knows you just farted, creating
a different perception compared to the smelly sneak attack of a surprise from someone else.
If you’d rather avoid the sulfur-like smell of any farts—and who besides James Joyce
wouldn’t?—there’s a pill for that. In 2014, a French inventor named Christian Poincheval
claimed he could turn your flatus from sour to sweet with a pill that would make your gas
smell like chocolate. If chocolate isn't your thing, there are rose, violet, ginger, and
lily of the valley varieties, too. By the way, one of our video producer's significant
other tried the pills for a video she made a couple years back. You'll be sad to know
that neither of them can recommend the product.
Well, if the pills are ineffective, maybe some fart-filtering fashion is a better bet.
There's an entire company, Shreddies, that uses activated carbon in its line of underwear,
pajamas, jeans, and even seat cushions to block the more putrid smells associated with
farts. If you happen to own any of their products, let us know how those are working out for
you in our comments section.
Finally: For those of you keeping count at home, I have used the word fart—or some
variation thereof, like farts, farting, and farted— 51 times now in this video—55
if you count the four in this sentence. Which is about how many times you’ll actually
pass gas over the next four days: yes, even you.
Our next episode is all about forbidden places. Leave a dangerous, walled-off, or otherwise
forbidden place in the comments for a chance to be featured in that episode. That’ll
be up next Wednesday. We’ll see you then!