40 Fun Facts About Farts and Flatulence

Which gas, also behind the stink of rotten eggs, is a leading source of the smell of human farts?

Hydrogen sulfide and other sulfur compounds make up less than 1% of a fart's volume. Methane, so often blamed, has no smell at all.

Which American founding father wrote a mock-serious essay urging scientists to make farts smell like perfume?

Benjamin Franklin wrote it around 1781 while serving as ambassador to France, to mock a call for papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels. He never actually submitted it.

Most of the methane released by cattle leaves their bodies in which way, despite all the jokes about cows?

Burping and breathing out account for 90–95% of the methane livestock release. Feed supplements such as seaweed and oregano have been proposed to cut it.

Which prank toy did novelty mogul Samuel Adams turn down as indelicate before a rival made it a hit?

The whoopee cushion was devised in the 1930s by workers at Toronto's JEM Rubber Company, playing with scrap rubber. Adams, inventor of the joy buzzer, later brought out his own version.

Which Mel Brooks comedy features Governor William J. Le Petomane and a campfire scene full of noisy flatulence?

Blazing Saddles named its governor, played by Brooks himself, after a French stage performer famed for farting at will. The campfire scene was among the things studio executives objected to.

Which German bread has a name built from an old word for breaking wind and a pet form of Nikolaus?

Pumpernickel joins pumpern, an early German word for breaking wind, to Nickel, a pet form of Nikolaus. English borrowed the name of Westphalia's dense black bread in the 1700s.

Roland the Farter held a Suffolk manor by performing one jump, one whistle and one fart at court on which holiday?

Christmas was when the 12th-century jester paid this unusual rent for Hemingstone manor each year. The deal is recorded in the 13th-century Book of Fees.

Which fruit names the mocking mouth noise also called a Bronx cheer, thanks to rhyming slang for fart?

Raspberry is short for raspberry tart, rhyming slang for fart. Americans have called the same rude noise a Bronx cheer since at least the early 1920s.

Which country's centuries-old He-gassen scrolls show people battling one another with blasts of flatulence?

Japan's He-gassen scrolls take their name from words meaning fart competitions. The theme goes back to the late Heian period, and many of the artists preferred to stay anonymous.

Fartlek, a running workout devised by coach Gösta Holmér, is named from words for speed play in which language?

Swedish fart means speed and lek means play, so the name has nothing to do with gas. Holmér developed the method in the late 1930s for distance runners.

In which part of the digestive tract, home to the densest population of gut bacteria, is most intestinal gas made?

Colon bacteria ferment the food residues that were not absorbed earlier in the gut. The small intestine, by contrast, holds far fewer bacteria.

Which range do doctors give as normal for the number of times a healthy person passes gas each day?

8–20 is the range usually quoted, though it varies with diet. Measured over a full day, the gas adds up to roughly half a litre to a litre and a half.

Which muscle's state of tension helps decide whether a fart comes out as a loud blast or a quiet hiss?

Anal sphincter tension sets the size of the opening the gas is pushed through. The volume of gas and the force behind it also change the sound.

Which anti-gas product, developed by Alan Kligerman, uses an enzyme to break down the sugars in legumes and cabbage?

Beano won its inventor the very first Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1991. Its enzyme, alpha-galactosidase, comes from the fungus Aspergillus niger.

At which Paris cabaret did Joseph Pujol, billed as Le Pétomane, become a star attraction by farting at will?

Moulin Rouge crowds heard him imitate cannon fire and thunderstorms and blow out a candle from yards away. His audiences included Sigmund Freud and the Prince of Wales.

Which 14th-century collection includes a story in which Nicholas farts in his rival Absolon's face from a window?

The Canterbury Tales gives the scene to the Miller, and Nicholas pays at once: Absolon has come back with a red-hot plough blade and brands him.

Which piece of cookware lends its name to the prank of trapping a bedmate under the covers with a fart?

Dutch oven is the slang for it. The real thing is a thick-walled cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid, which explains the joke.

Which Lion King sidekick, voiced by Ernie Sabella, is a friendly warthog with a notorious flatulence problem?

Pumbaa's voice was a happy accident: Ernie Sabella and Nathan Lane first auditioned to play hyenas, and the producers recast the pair after seeing how well they worked together.

Which animated series features Terrance and Phillip, a Canadian duo whose own show is built on fart jokes?

South Park's creators invented the pair in answer to early critics, who said the series was little more than flatulence jokes and primitive animation.

Which flame color, typical of burning methane, gives a lit fart slang names that end in angel and dart?

Blue is the usual hue, though orange and yellow flames turn up too, because the gas mix differs from person to person. The stunt is discouraged because people get hurt.

Which fish's gas-passing noises were probably the 'foreign submarines' a Scandinavian navy chased through the 1980s?

Herring passing gas, marine biologists concluded, best explained the navy's mystery recordings. The finding is credited with helping to end more than a decade of costly submarine hunts.

Which wood-eating insects are a notable natural source of atmospheric methane, released as they break down cellulose?

Termites give off the gas as a by-product of digesting wood. That matters beyond the nest, because methane ranks among the prime greenhouse gases.

A shortage of which enzyme lets milk sugar pass undigested to gut bacteria, a common cause of gas after dairy?

Lactase splits milk sugar into glucose and galactose in the small intestine. Levels of it commonly decline as people grow up, so the trouble often begins after childhood.

Which over-the-counter drug, sold as Gas-X, eases trapped wind by merging small gas bubbles into larger ones?

Simethicone lowers the surface tension of gas bubbles so they join up and pass more easily. It does not reduce the amount of gas the gut produces.

Which term do doctors use for swallowing excess air, a habit that can add to the volume of intestinal gas?

Aerophagia happens in a small way with every meal and drink. As the main cause of excess gas, though, it is considered rare.

Which condition, the subject of a landmark study by Paul Auerbach and York Miller, makes people pass more gas?

High altitude brings a drop in air pressure, and tests on military pilots in pressure chambers confirmed the urge. The syndrome goes by the acronym HAFE and was first described around 1820.

Which American author's bawdy sketch 1601 imagines an English royal court thrown into debate when someone breaks wind?

Mark Twain wrote it in 1876 for an all-male writing group, published it anonymously in 1880 and only admitted to it in 1906.

Which English queen, in John Aubrey's Brief Lives, teases the Earl of Oxford about a fart after his seven years abroad?

Elizabeth I, in Aubrey's telling, assured the earl she had forgotten the incident, which rather proved she had not. Aubrey collected such gossip in the last decades of the 17th century.

Which ancient Greek playwright packed fart jokes into his 5th-century BC comedies The Clouds and The Knights?

Aristophanes filled both plays with wind gags, and they rank among the important early texts in the long history of toilet humor.

Which siege bomb, familiar from a Hamlet line about being hoist, is named from a French verb meaning to fart?

Petard comes from the French péter, to break wind. In modern French a pétard is nothing more alarming than a firecracker.

Which adjective for a spirited, scrappy person descends from a Middle English verb meaning to break wind?

Feisty comes from feist, an American word for a small dog. That in turn is short for a 1520s phrase for a stinking cur, built on fysten, to break wind.

Joseph Pujol, the stage farter Le Pétomane, learned which trade and returned to it when World War I began?

Baker Pujol would amuse his customers by imitating musical instruments behind the counter. After leaving the stage he went back to Marseille and later opened a biscuit factory in Toulon.

Which English king did Roland the Farter serve as jester, earning a Suffolk manor for a yearly leap, whistle and fart?

Henry II kept Roland among his entertainers in the 12th century. The manor, at Hemingstone, later passed to Roland's son Hubert.

Which Roman emperor, Suetonius wrote, considered an edict allowing public flatulence for the sake of health?

Claudius was mocked for it after his death. A satire attributed to Seneca has the dying emperor make a great noise from his rear just before his last words.

Which African country's justice minister, George Chaponda, said in 2011 that a new bill would outlaw farting in public?

Malawi's minister told local radio that the Local Courts Bill covered it, but the solicitor general said its line on fouling the air meant pollution.

Which group of single-celled gut microbes, distinct from bacteria, makes the methane found in some people's farts?

Archaea such as Methanobrevibacter smithii make it, and not everyone carries them. In one study of nine adults, only five had the methane-makers in their samples.

Which law of sound change, turning Indo-European p into Germanic f, links English fart to Greek perdomai?

Grimm's law also turned d into t, which gives fart its final consonant. The word is among the oldest in English, with relatives in Sanskrit, Lithuanian and Russian.

Which term do herbalists use for a remedy, often a blend of spices and essential oils, taken to combat flatulence?

Carminative goes back to a Latin word for carding wool. One old explanation is that such remedies were thought to comb out the humours behind wind, like knots from a fleece.

Which early Church Father wrote in The City of God about people who could fart musically at will?

Augustine of Hippo noted that their sounds came without any smell and seemed almost like singing. More than a thousand years later, the scholar Juan Luis Vives claimed to have witnessed such a feat himself.

Which ancient people left a joke, dated to 1900 BC, about a young wife farting in her husband's lap?

Sumerians framed it as something that has never happened since time immemorial. It is often described as one of the oldest recorded jokes of any kind.