Google Spreadsheet includes more than 80 animals from all over the globe.
So, if whoever smelled it dealt it and whoever denied it supplied it, then does a bear really fart in the woods? Sure, I've always wondered but this is also something scientists from all around the globe are attempting to answer, too.
“Does it fart?” is one of most frequent questions zoologists get from kids, according to Dani Rabaiotti of the Zoological Society of London.
In fact, this is why the #DoesItFart adventure took flight back in 2017.
Rabaiotti's teenage brother asked if snakes ever "experienced flatulence." She knew from previous studies that wild dogs in Africa definitely fart, the same goes for the seals that live on the Atlantic island of South Georgia.
However, she wasn’t sure if snakes cut the cheese, so she asked a wildlife ecologist over at Auburn University, David Steen. The answer is YES.
“Snakes sometimes discharge feces and musk as a defensive strategy, and this is often accompanied by what I would consider classic fart noises."
So, there's a couple of mysteries solved, but what about the other creature of the animal kingdom?
Well, scientists have been relying on Twitter to provide answers. They’ve created a hashtag — #DoesItFart — and they've added their results to a public Google Spreadsheet, which details the flatulence habits of more than 80 animals.
Here's a few I found interesting/hilarious:
Guinea Pigs - "very audible and stinks to high heaven"
Herring - "used for communication"
Snow Leopards - "their floofy bottoms help muffle the sound"
Rats - "smells worse than dog farts"
Manatees - "constantly"
Millipedes - "yes and they're silent but deadly"
Domestic Cat - "seems to worsen in the vicinity of a human's face"
Goat - "yes, but their burps are worse"
Rhinocerous - "sounds wet"
Mastodon - "not anymore"
Unicorn - "it's glitter and rainbows soft serve"
Unfortunately, it looks like Parrots, Moonsnails, Freshwater Oysters, and Mussells are a hard "no" and Spiders are in the "maybe" category. You can view the full spreadsheet here.
It has since turned into a book named Does It Fart?: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence — just some more evidence that big things can happen when the global community comes together.
Here's a bigger question: If everyone, including animals, farted at the same time, would the planet explode into tiny little pieces. That's a question I've always wondered about.
By Matthew Sterner
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