have you ever wondered if snakes fart
how about a manatee chimpanzees sloths
centipedes
no
are you wondering now
to fart or not to fart that is the
question
well it's a question anyway
one that zoologist danny raviati has
asked herself many many times
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hi my name's dr danny raviotti i'm a
zoologist at the zoological society of
london and i'm also an author of a
number of books including does it fart
why a book about farts you might ask
one day my brother said danny do snakes
fart i'm a zoologist so i'm kind of
expected to know that kind of thing but
i realized i actually didn't know the
answer
so
i reached out on twitter to someone who
would david steen snake expert
and i asked him do snakes fart
and he responded
sigh
yes
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after that danny was cooking with gas
and other scientists got involved too
it spawned a hashtag and in the true
nature of science i suggested we turn
that hashtag into a spreadsheet so that
scientists could refer to it later on
and then it got covered in the media
and then we got offered the book deal
the book covers a wide variety of
animals mammals vertebrates reptiles and
birds and provides insight into which
fart which don't and which ones we still
aren't sure about the information is
explosive
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honestly i was really surprised about
the amazing array of things that farts
are used for in the animal kingdom it's
absolutely incredible
for example manatees use farts for
buoyancy so they will let out gas
from their rear end if they want to be
less buoyant and that allows them to
sink down in the water column
unfortunately this means that if
manatees get constipated they've been
noticed floating upside down with their
tails in the air as they can no longer
fart out the gas they need to in order
to sink
animals have also been known to use
their farts for defense
some species of snake use a strategy
called cloacal popping where they suck
air into their cloaca and they release
it which makes a loud popping sound to
deter predators
chimps they'll just let one rip anytime
any place it allows the scientists to
find these animals in the forest if they
can't see the chimps they can listen out
for the sound of their loud farts up in
the treetops
and use them to locate the animals
one of the animals where it was the most
difficult to find out whether they
farted or not was the sloth instead of
farting out gas which is really
difficult for a sloth because they only
poo every three weeks
they instead reabsorb the gas from their
gut and breathe out kind of like a
heart-filled breath
and while flatulence is fun and
fascinating danny thinks that farts have
the potential to change the way we
connect with the natural world
i think in today's era a lot of people
are getting more disconnected from
nature
that's just a product of the way we live
these days
and i feel like if reading a book about
farts exposes people to new animals and
new amazing things that they do
then hopefully they'll want to preserve
it more
what a fart
heartwarming thought
you