Farts and Flatulence
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40 free Farts and Flatulence trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Everybody does it, almost nobody admits it, and people have been laughing about it for as long as anyone has written jokes down. Passing gas is one of the few subjects that links gut bacteria, ancient comedy, royal courts and the playground. This quiz starts with the science: where intestinal gas comes from, what gives it a smell, which foods and remedies change it, and what animals add to the total. Then it turns to history and culture, from professional stage farters and bawdy classics of literature to prank toys, cartoon characters and everyday words with surprisingly windy origins. It is written for curious adults and older kids with a sense of humor, for quiz hosts who want a round nobody will forget, and for anyone who has wondered whether the old stories are true. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which gas, also behind the stink of rotten eggs, is a leading source of the smell of human farts?
Hydrogen sulfide
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.
Q 02Which American founding father wrote a mock-serious essay urging scientists to make farts smell like perfume?
Benjamin Franklin
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.
Q 03Most of the methane released by cattle leaves their bodies in which way, despite all the jokes about cows?
Burping
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.
Q 04Which prank toy did novelty mogul Samuel Adams turn down as indelicate before a rival made it a hit?
Whoopee cushion
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.
Q 05Which Mel Brooks comedy features Governor William J. Le Petomane and a campfire scene full of noisy flatulence?
Blazing Saddles
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.
Q 06Which German bread has a name built from an old word for breaking wind and a pet form of Nikolaus?
Pumpernickel
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.
Q 07Roland the Farter held a Suffolk manor by performing one jump, one whistle and one fart at court on which holiday?
Christmas
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.
Q 08Which fruit names the mocking mouth noise also called a Bronx cheer, thanks to rhyming slang for fart?
Raspberry
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.
Q 09Which country's centuries-old He-gassen scrolls show people battling one another with blasts of flatulence?
Japan
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.
Q 10Fartlek, a running workout devised by coach Gösta Holmér, is named from words for speed play in which language?
Swedish
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.
Q 11In which part of the digestive tract, home to the densest population of gut bacteria, is most intestinal gas made?
Colon
Colon bacteria ferment the food residues that were not absorbed earlier in the gut. The small intestine, by contrast, holds far fewer bacteria.
Q 12Which range do doctors give as normal for the number of times a healthy person passes gas each day?
8–20
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.
Q 13Which muscle's state of tension helps decide whether a fart comes out as a loud blast or a quiet hiss?
Anal sphincter
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.
Q 21Which fish's gas-passing noises were probably the 'foreign submarines' a Scandinavian navy chased through the 1980s?
Herring
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.
Q 22Which wood-eating insects are a notable natural source of atmospheric methane, released as they break down cellulose?
Termites
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.
Q 23A shortage of which enzyme lets milk sugar pass undigested to gut bacteria, a common cause of gas after dairy?
Lactase
Q 14Which anti-gas product, developed by Alan Kligerman, uses an enzyme to break down the sugars in legumes and cabbage?
Beano
Beano won its inventor the very first Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1991. Its enzyme, alpha-galactosidase, comes from the fungus Aspergillus niger.
Q 15At which Paris cabaret did Joseph Pujol, billed as Le Pétomane, become a star attraction by farting at will?
Moulin Rouge
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.
Q 16Which 14th-century collection includes a story in which Nicholas farts in his rival Absolon's face from a window?
The Canterbury Tales
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.
Q 17Which piece of cookware lends its name to the prank of trapping a bedmate under the covers with a fart?
Dutch oven
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.
Q 18Which Lion King sidekick, voiced by Ernie Sabella, is a friendly warthog with a notorious flatulence problem?
Pumbaa
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.
Q 19Which animated series features Terrance and Phillip, a Canadian duo whose own show is built on fart jokes?
South Park
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.
Q 20Which flame color, typical of burning methane, gives a lit fart slang names that end in angel and dart?
Blue
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.
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.
Q 24Which over-the-counter drug, sold as Gas-X, eases trapped wind by merging small gas bubbles into larger ones?
Simethicone
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.
Q 25Which term do doctors use for swallowing excess air, a habit that can add to the volume of intestinal gas?
Aerophagia
Aerophagia happens in a small way with every meal and drink. As the main cause of excess gas, though, it is considered rare.
Q 26Which condition, the subject of a landmark study by Paul Auerbach and York Miller, makes people pass more gas?
High altitude
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.
Q 27Which American author's bawdy sketch 1601 imagines an English royal court thrown into debate when someone breaks wind?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain wrote it in 1876 for an all-male writing group, published it anonymously in 1880 and only admitted to it in 1906.
Q 28Which English queen, in John Aubrey's Brief Lives, teases the Earl of Oxford about a fart after his seven years abroad?
Elizabeth I
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.
Q 29Which ancient Greek playwright packed fart jokes into his 5th-century BC comedies The Clouds and The Knights?
Aristophanes
Aristophanes filled both plays with wind gags, and they rank among the important early texts in the long history of toilet humor.
Q 30Which siege bomb, familiar from a Hamlet line about being hoist, is named from a French verb meaning to fart?
Petard
Petard comes from the French péter, to break wind. In modern French a pétard is nothing more alarming than a firecracker.