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by Brenna Lorenz
All contents copyright © 1998
Brenna Lorenz, Megaera Lorenz, Malachi Pulte. All Rights Reserved.
Note: This is the original Facts on Farts. There are several unauthorized, plagiarized versions out there that do not give credit to this page's author, and which are incomplete. Do not be fooled by imitations! |
Most fart gas
comes from swallowed air and consists largely of nitrogen and carbon dioxide,
the oxygen having been absorbed by the time it reaches the anal opening.
These gases are odorless, although they often pick up other (and more odiferous)
components on the way through the bowel. They emerge from the anus in fairly
large bubbles at body temperature. A person can often achieve a good sound
with these voluminous farts, but they are commonly (but not always!) mundane
with respect to odor, and don't feel particularly warm.
Another major
source of fart gas is bacterial action. Bacterial fermentation and digestion
processes produce heat as a byproduct as well as various pungent gases.
The resulting bubbles of gas tend to be small, hot, and concentrated with
stinky bacterial metabolic products. These emerge as the notorious, warm,
SBD (Silent-But-Deadly), often in amounts too small to produce a good sound,
but excelling in stench.
One may wonder
why fart gas travels downward toward the anus when gas has a lower density
than liquids and solids, and should therefore travel upwards.
The intestine
squeezes its contents toward the anus in a series of contractions, a process
called peristalsis. The process is stimulated by eating, which is why we
often need to poop and fart right after a meal. Peristalsis creates
a zone of high pressure, forcing all intestinal contents, gas included,
to move towards a region of lower pressure, which is toward the anus. Gas
is more mobile than other components, and small bubbles coalesce to from
larger bubbles en route to the exit. When peristalsis is not active, gas
bubbles may begin to percolate upwards again, but they won't get very far
due to the complicated and convoluted shape of the intestine. Furthermore,
the anus is neither up nor down when a person is lying down.
The butt is the location of the anus in humans, and by definition, a fart is an anal escape of intestinal gas. We should be grateful that we are not crinoids. The crinoid is a marine creature with a U-shaped gut, and its anus is located next to its mouth.
Fart travel time
depends on atmospheric conditions such as humidity, temperature and wind
speed and direction, the molecular weight of the fart particles, and the
distance between the fart transmitter and the fart receiver. Farts also disperse
(spread out) as they leave the source, and their potency diminishes with dilution.
Generally, if the fart is not detected within a few seconds, it will be too
dilute for perception and will be lost into the atmosphere forever.
Exceptional
conditions exist when the fart is released into a small enclosed area such
as an elevator, a small room, or a car. These conditions limit the amount
of dilution possible, and the fart may remain in a smellable concentration
for a long period of time, until it condenses on the walls.
Actually, the fart stinks immediately upon emergence, but it takes several seconds for the odor to travel to the farter's nostrils. If farts could travel at the speed of sound, we would smell them almost instantly, at the same time we hear them.
Yes, of course. So do grandmothers, priests, kings, presidents, opera singers, beauty queens, and nuns. Even Yoda farts. See the Britney Smears music video "Oops, I farted again."
No, women fart
just as much as men. It's just that most men take more pride in it than
most women. There is a large variation among individuals in the amount of
fart gas produced per day, but the variation does not correlate with gender.
I have read
that men fart more often than women. If this is true, then women
must be saving it up and expelling more gas per fart than men do.
A gentleman is mostly likely to fart first thing in the morning, while in the bathroom. This is known as "morning thunder," and if the gentleman gets good resonance, it can be heard throughout the household.
As I understand it, a captive fart can escape as soon as the person relaxes. This means that a lot of people who assiduously refrain from farting during the day do so at great length as soon as they fall asleep. Having been on a great many overnight field trips, long bus trips, and trans-Pacific flights, I can personally vouch for the fact that lots of people do fart voluminously as they doze off. So the answer to the question would be, you can refrain from farting as long as you can stay awake!
I have not made a scientific study of this, but I don't think all people fart in their sleep. I think mainly those who refuse to fart when they're awake do so when dozing off. For other people, toilet training takes such a strong hold that they let nothing pass their sphincters in sleep. For these people, the gas accumulates in the night and they vent it upon awakening.
There is a company
called Fartypants
that sells underwear designed to absorb the odor of farts. If you should be
caught without your Fartypants, another ploy is to blame the dog or cat, if
one should be present, or complain about how the wind must be blowing from
the direction of the paper mill.
As for the sound...
if you are in a large group of people, act oblivious and innocent, or glance
quickly at the person next to you, as if you think he/she did it. Other
strategies include coughing or suddenly moving your chair so that people think
that they misheard the fart. If you are with one other person, you can act
as if nothing happened, and the other person may believe he was mistaken in
thinking he heard a fart.
CJT addresses
the problem of farting loudly in a public restroom as follows: "My solution:
use a handful of loose toilet paper, cover your butt hole and it will muffle
the farting; my friends and I call it the 'Buff Muff'!"
Depending upon
the company, another strategy is not to cover it up, but to proudly proclaim
the fart as your own grand accomplishment and to issue a challenge to the
others to outdo that one if they think they can.
No, even strike-anywhere matches have their limits, unless the fart has the consistency of sandpaper! Any fart that rough I would hesitate to call a fart. Also, farts have the same temperature as the body from which they emerge, and aren't hot enough to initiate combustion.
Aside from the other good stuff in Kids Shenanigans, this book comes with a whoopie cushion! |
The Fart Guys are talented guys who bring us songs, skits and sound effects. Possibly the funniest CD you'll ever own. |
Here it is: Who Cut the Cheese? It's the best fart book out there. |
The Unspeakably Worst Fart Book is an illustrated guide to types of farts. |
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Yes, any odor
that we find disgusting smells delicious to a dog. Dogs respond to the smell
of farts, rotting fish, and carrion the same way we respond to the smell
of bacon frying or cookies baking. A dog will often sniff the butt of the
farter in order to inhale as much of the odor as possible.
I have heard
only one story about a dog being disconcerted by a fart. According to a friend,
her brother once delivered a fart so evil that it made the dog sneeze, shake
his head, and paw at his nose. That was either an unusual fart or an unusual
dog.
Yes, turtles do
fart, and their farts smell incredibly bad, as do the farts of snakes. In
fact, it is my opinion, based on personal experience with reptiles and not
on any formal research, that many reptiles use farts as a weapon.
Reptile farts
smell so bad that sometimes you can tell that one is nearby in the woods,
even on a windy day, before you can see the animal. One day I was hiking
through the woods in Arkansas with a friend and I told my friend, "I smell
a snake fart." A second later, the snake crawled across the path. Astounding
but true!
In an article
published in the December 2000 issue of Discover, "the world's leading
expert on snake sounds," Bruce Young of LaFayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania,
affirmed that snakes do fart. The sonoran coral snake and the western hook-nosed
snake fart with an audible popping sound when disturbed.
I'm not sure that horse farts smell worse than our farts, but they do smell different. Horses have a different diet from us and different gut microbes, so their farts have a different composition. They also fart more voluminously than humans, and the volume of the gas can be overwhelming if one is unfortunate enough to be near a farting horse indoors.
If we define a
fart to be an anal escape of intestinal gas, then it follows that animals
that lack intestines or an anus cannot fart. Most animals possess
intestines and an anus, but there are some that don't. These include:
Sponges:
These organisms lack true tissues and organs. They have just a few types
of cells organized into a bag with holes in it. Water flows into some holes
and out other holes. Sponges are so different from other animals that some
biologists think we shouldn't even call them animals.
Cnidaria: This
phylum includes the jellyfish, corals, sea anemones and hydra. Their tissues
are organized into a bag with a mouth surrounded by stinging tentacles. Food
enters the mouth and is digested inside the bag, after which the leftovers
are expelled via the same opening. In effect, the same hole serves as both
a mouth and an anus. Any gas expelled by a cnidarian would be more appropriately
termed a belch rather than a fart, since the animal lacks intestines and
separate anus.
Pogonophoran
worms: These remarkable animals, who dwell on the sea floor near active volcanic
regions associated with mid-ocean ridges, possess no mouth, no stomach,
no intestines, and no anus. Apparently they retain their svelte, worm-shaped
figures by giving up on eating completely! They survive by means of a mutualistic
relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria that live in their flesh. Anyway,
these animals cannot possibly fart.
A second category of animals that probably don't fart are animals that live very deep underwater. At high pressures, gas remains in solution rather than forming bubbles. So there is a good chance that all those clams, echinoderms, fish and other animals living near the seafloor don't fart because their farts stay in solution and never emerge as bubbles, even though the animals possess perfectly good intestines and anuses.
Our ability to distinguish between the need to fart and the need to poop is something that we learn gradually in the process of toilet training and early childhood. With the tactile nerve endings in the rectal area, we can actually feel different sensations depending upon what is waiting by the exit. Of course, sometimes we are fooled, especially if the substance at hand is extremely fluid in nature, and that is when we have the unfortunate accident of venting a squirt of diarrhea rather than an innocent fart.
That depends on
what you are trying to achieve.
Years and years
ago, I read a novel (can't remember which) that had a character in it who
was plagued with intestinal gas pain. The character would coax farts out
by getting down on all fours with her butt in the air, pressing her thighs
against her belly. So perhaps this is the best position for farting if you
are having difficulty getting them to come out.
Back when I
was in geology field camp, we would sit around the campfire in the evening
and ignite our flatus. It was a ritual. When a fart was ready to emerge,
the farter would announce, "I have one." And everyone else would intone,
"Assume the proper position." The farter would lie back on his or her shoulders
with back propped up, head between the knees, and posterior in the air.
The purpose was to give the person with the match easy access to the critical
vent.
Expert farters
of my acquaintance often shift their weight onto one leg and lift the other
slightly when farting. I assume that this position is adopted less to aid
in the farting process than to signal that a fart is imminent.
I suppose I should
start by saying that only some chicks deny farting. The rest of us
acknowledge our gaseous accomplishments with pride.
However, a great
many sisters do deny farting. The reason is that they have been misled into
thinking that farts are not ladylike. It is a great mistake to say that
farting is not ladylike. The reason is that all people fart, including ladies.
Anything that ladies do is by definition ladylike, and that includes the
emission of anal gases.
No, inhaled farts
would go into the lungs rather than into the digestive system, and would
simply be exhaled again, although it might be possible that some of the fart
components might be absorbed into the blood. If you wanted to benefit from
other people's farts in the way you describe, you would have to swallow them
somehow.
I am not aware of any intoxicating agents in flatus. However, most farts contain very little oxygen, and you may experience dizziness if you are inhaling overly concentrated fart essence, simply from lack of oxygen. On the other hand, if you are inhaling farts in the open air and are breathing rapidly in order to inhale as much fart as possible, you may be hyperventilating, which also induces dizziness.
Then there is the intrinsic hilarity factor: farts are so funny in both sound and odor that you might feel high just from the basic entertainment value of farts.
That depends on
the tolerance level of the person with whom one is trying to be potent!
Fortunately
for humans, farting doesn't cause tissue damage. Other animals aren't so
lucky. Soldier termites can actually turn themselves into bombs by detonating
themselves via the explosive release of gas and feces, a process called
"autothysis."
Yes, but it's
a rare talent. The great early 20th Century French flatulist, Le Petomane,
was able to do this, and in fact was able to suck up an entire bowlful of
water (just the water, not the bowl) into his colon and expel it again with
considerable force. By sucking in large quantities of air, he was
able to perform lengthy shows on stage, and could imitate musical instruments,
farm animals, and bird songs, whistle melodies, and play the ocarina. His
productions were said to be virtually odorless, which is to be expected
from air obtained directly from the outside.
Here is a message
I received regarding the skill of inhaling via the anus:
"i would just like you to know that i am part of a trio, who can suck in air in our anal openings. we are somewhat air-bandits. we can let the longest farts you have ever heard. our record holder, chad, stands at 24 sec. the record for most farts in a row is derek, at 492. and i, robert, have earned such nicknames as: Mad Crapper, gurglemeister, and old wetful. We have followed Le Petomane example, and have mastered the art of farting."
Jason W. says, "I am a 16 year old guy that is a part of a 3-man fart on command group. We get together every Saturday night and practice our talent to songs with a good beat. We accomplish this by getting on our hands and knees, completely relaxing, and our butt hole just opens up and air just seeps into our colons. We then get into position and let them rip. We can so far play a song called "THE EYE OF THE TIGER" (Rocky 3 theme song). We came across another group of 4 guys that can do this during the winter of 2001. We started to get together with them more frequently, and now we have a full fledged band going all on farting...We are going to try to make a CD on some songs we know, but no one wants to let us...I personally have let a fart go for about 75 seconds. On average each Saturday night we let off about 1000 farts EACH! The only problem with flatulating when we want is that now 2 of us can't help but sucking in air through our anus when we sit down." Jason has also provided the following instructions for people who would like to acquire this skill:
1) Get a pillow and a soft surface.Adam reports that a student at his high school, known as "The King" could fart "God Save the Queen" by alternately inhaling and exhaling through his anus. The students referred to the inhaling process as "input."
2) Place your ear on the pillow with your head turned sideways.
3) Put your butt up in the air, bringing your knees as close up to your head as possible. This relaxes your anal opening.
4) Once you're relaxed enough, you should feel a strange sensation...this is air traveling into your colon.
5) Through practice you will be able to do this by just sitting down.
No, smoke consists of solid particles suspended in air. When such a mixture enters the digestive system, the solids condense on the walls and other objects in the gut, or go into suspension in liquids in the system. However, for people capable of inhaling through the anus, it is possible to smoke a cigarette with the anal opening and then blow the smoke back out.
This is generally caused by a recent meal of hot peppers or related spices. The oils associated with these foods remain intact and active all the way through one's gastrointestinal system.
As long as what comes out is only fart and no poop, your bath water should not be significantly polluted. Most of the gas just bubbles up and contaminates the air rather than the water.
Yes, it is true! The gas that emerges is simply trapped air, for there is no gas production in the genitalia of a woman. The air can enter because the system is open to the outside. This highly specialized kind of fart is sometimes called a queef. This occurs especially frequently during the sex act, when air in the genitalia gets compressed and is forced out at high pressure.
In the British Isles, this phenomenon is known as a "fanny fart." Whereas, in the United States, "fanny" refers to the buttocks, in Great Britain, the word pertains to the female pudenda.
I have asked various men this question and they all deny it emphatically. However, elrondh contributed the information that under certain rare and artificially-induced circumstances, a man might pass gas through his penis. In this case, the man's bladder had been inflated for a medical procedure, the air introduced via catheter inserted through the urethra. This gas escaped during later attempts to urinate, "accompanied by a brief but sharp burning sensation."
It should be theoretically
possible to do this, but there would be lots of logistical problems. I would
suggest using a plastic bag instead of a jar. You might try the following
as a science fair experiment:
Fart into several
plastic bags and seal them carefully. Then fill several other plastic bags
with ordinary air. Wait 24 hours. Then get volunteers to smell the contents
of the bags to see if they can correctly identify which ones contain the
farts. This should tell you if it is possible to store a fart in any useful
way.
Malachi and Megaera have come up with a way to capture a fart in a jar. They say to do it in the bathtub while bathing. Fill the jar with bath water and then hold it with the open end downward. Lean back in the bathtub so that your fart bubbles will emerge in front of you rather than behind you where you can't see them. Catch the bubbles in the jar, and put the lid on the jar while it's still underwater. This way, you capture a fairly pure fart uncontaminated by atmospheric air. To enjoy your captured fart to the fullest extent, make sure that your jar does not already smell like whatever was in it before, like pickles or peanut butter.
Meep wrote to say that her fiancé was an expert fart collector at the age of ten. He used Kodak film canisters, and kept them on a shelf in his room. Experiments on his mother proved the efficacy of his method.
For those of
you who are interested in professional-grade fart collecting, you need to
know that *Suarez et al. (1998) reported that hydrogen sulfide and other
sulfur-containing (odor-causing) fart gases "rapidly reacted with glass,
some plastics, and rubber, but were stable in polypropylene..." so choose
your containers with care.
*Suarez, F.L., J. Springfield, and M.D. Levin (1998) Identification of gases responsible for the odour of human flatus and evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odour; Gut, v. 43: 100-104.
It is not unusual to enjoy farting. I believe that enjoyment of farting is a healthy attitude, since everyone has to fart. If a person is farting to the extent that it creates problems and unhappiness, then a visit to a doctor is in order.
I believe that it is not only common, it is universal. A person farts and then thinks, at least subconsciously, "Wow, I made that!"
Farts are, alas,
colorless. All of the gases that make up farts have no inherent color. But
just think of how interesting it would be if farts were bright orange like
nitrogen dioxide gas! It would certainly take the mystery out of who farted.
Never-the-less,
a high-personality gas like fart gas suggests color to people. Some people
envision farts as brown, others as green or yellow. I have always thought
of farts as brown, presumably because poop is brown. When someone farts in
our car, that person might say, "You better not breathe through your mouth
for awhile, or your teeth will turn brown."
I knew a toddler who
used to draw pictures of farts as yellow rectangles full of holes, like a
slice of Swiss cheese. She thought of farts as yellow, and said that she
knew they were rectangular because she could feel the sharp corners scraping
against her on the way out!
Ernie C. suggests
that if farts were visible, they would look like pork rinds.
Helen says,
"It always seemed to me like farts were lumps of coal, black in color and
irregularly spherical in shape."
The fart should smell just as much for the person who created it as it does for other people. However, the farter is somewhat protected by having the fart propelled away from his body in a direction opposite to his nose. Farting upwind nullifies this advantage.
As pointed out by Barb F., who contributed the term to the fart thesaurus, a fart can be regarded as "aerosolized poop," which means that microscopic fragments and droplets of poop are actually distributed throughout the gaseous matrix of the fart. When delivered from the anus with some force, the components of the fart can penetrate one's clothing and these tiny particles can be trapped in the fibers of the cloth. The particles are transferred to your fingers and then your nose when you scratch and sniff.
The term "filtering" suggests that some components pass through and others are trapped. This is certainly the case to some extent. Very likely most of the gaseous particles pass through unimpeded (although some of the odor-causing molecules adhere to cloth), whereas some of the microscopic liquid and solid droplets are trapped in the cloth. The efficiency of clothing as a filter could be estimated by farting while wearing an increasingly large number of layers of underpants, with the assistance of a willing odor judge. The farter could also smell each successive layer of underwear to see if the fart odor diminished from interior to exterior layers.
The sense of taste detects substances that are either liquid or dissolved in liquid. You can taste a fart when the fart's constituent molecules go into solution in your saliva.
The ultimate fate of fart particles depends on the nature of the particles. Gas molecules mostly mix into the atmosphere, although some may react chemically to form new substances. Aerosolized particles of liquid and solid poop probably do condense on surfaces. Most of these particles are polar (with a positively charged end and a negatively charged end) and are attracted to other polar substances or charged surfaces like a monitor screen. Other fart particles condense on microscopic water droplets in the air if the humidity is very high (as in a bathroom), and some particles go into solution in water.
Yes, this can happen if you are suffering from an anal fissure, a split in the wall of the colon. It can also happen to a woman who experiences a queef during her period.
I'm sure that
everyone has experienced this phenomenon, in which one delivers oneself
forth of a silent but potent gaseous emission and then steps rapidly away,
only to have the fart cling to one's person. Part of the reason for this annoying
characteristic of farts is the turbulence that follows in the wake of a moving
person. The fart "slip streams" or is actually pulled along in the farter's
direction by the air currents behind the person.
Another factor
is that part of the fart is caught in the farter's clothing, and diffuses
out slowly after the main part of the emission has dispersed.
There are several
factors. First of all, a shower is a small, enclosed space, so the fart
gas is more concentrated, and the high turbidity of the air in the shower
circulates the gas through the space effectively. Secondly, the high humidity
and high temperature conditions in the shower enhance a person's sense of
smell and taste. The farts don't actually smell worse, it's just that we can
smell them better than usual.
Similar conditions
prevail in the bathtub.
If Venus's surface temperature were a mere 200 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, liquid water could exist there because of Venus's extremely high atmospheric pressure. But the temperature on Venus is almost 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Because humans are mostly water, a person would not simply emit gas on Venus, but would become gas, a whole-body fart. Venus already has a lot of sulfur compounds in its atmosphere, so a fart on Venus probably wouldn't even produce much of a smell.
Yes, a fart should propel you forward, since there is virtually no opposing force in the form of friction or gravity to counteract the force of the fart.
The water vapor component of farts would freeze quite readily, but to freeze the entire fart would require high pressure and low temperature conditions such as that used to produce dry ice. The fart's composition would be unchanged by the process, and hence would still be smelly upon reversion to the gaseous state.
Farts tend to be rich in carbon dioxide, and may also contain hydrogen sulfide, the substance primarily responsible for the stench of farts. If a fart were to be dissolved in water, carbon dioxide would interact with water to produce carbonic acid, and hydrogen sulfide would make hydrosulfuric acid. These are both weak acids, so farts (at least when in solution) are mildly acidic.
This is unlikely, because most underwear is made of material with a fairly high tensile strength, meaning that it can endure a certain level of extensional stress without brittle failure. Furthermore, the porous nature of underwear fabrics allows much of the fart's force to pass through the spaces rather than to stress the fabric.
According to Eric Partridge in his excellent book of word origins (Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English), our word fart comes from the Old English word feortan, presumably of echoic origin, meaning that the word was chosen to sound like the object named.
Now, that's an
interesting idea! My guess would be yes, since farts are nice and moist
like our breath, but this is one question that I'm not in a position to answer.
I live in the tropics, and it never gets cold here.
Several people
have tried the experiment and have written to tell me the results. Most people
said that they could indeed see their farts, but one person said that he
couldn't see it even with his pants off.
Here is what anywhere32 reported: "In the boys' locker room after morning water polo practice it was cold out and one of the players only had on his speedo and let out a fart. About four of us saw it and couldn't contain our laughter for the rest of the day."
John of the UK said, "Farts expelled
in cold air leave what can only be described as a long bushy
tail. This is quite funny waiting
on a train station platform on a cold dark frosty morning. A person will
move away from everyone to a safe distance, and then release a long quiet
fart, only to have a sudden and dramatic long bushy white tail coming from
their anus; it goes down a little way and slowly curves up ending in a point,
just like a dogs tail!"
Proceed to the fart word list!
A fart classification scheme, complete with illustrations, is available for your pleasure at Christian Peritore's Salute to Flatulence.
Hear genuine fart sounds at the Toot Archive!
Hear remarkable dramatic farting at Farts and Burps From All Over the World!
Hear more remarkable farts at The Royal Fartorium, and help name the latest fart.
Here are more fart sounds from Peter Zwarts' Farts.
Download your very own Fart Machine!
Read uplifting and elegant fart poetry and other fart humor at Fartzfest!
Send a fart e-card, listen to some fart wavs and read fart jokes at FartGreetings.com!
Find fun links on farts and other interesting academic subjects at CutClass.com!
Take the Fart Survey!
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