What did a group of scientists obsessed with farts do?

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After reading the article, I still have a question: In addition to the result of the coordinated work of the gas-producing bacteria in the body, shouldn't the gas taken in when eating also be the result of the fart? If, as the article says, the reason why birds don't fart is because there are no gas-producing bacteria in their bodies, does that mean that they don't eat air when they eat? Or does the gas taken in by eating be discharged from the body through burping or other means rather than through the end of the digestive tract? I hope friends who know more can give me some advice.

I didn't fart, but I may have. © Goran Tomasevic/Reuters Do baboons fart? What about salamanders? Do millipedes fart?

These questions may sound like something Bart Simpson would ask in science class, but in real life, scientists are using Twitter to try to find the answers. They've even created a hashtag, #DoesItFart, and a shared document detailing the habits of more than 60 animals that produce gas.

So, which animals fart? It turns out there are a lot of them. Bats fart, too, according to David Bennett, a PhD candidate at Queen Mary College London. And the bigger they are, the louder they are.

Mice, zebras, and bearded dragons are also animals that fart. Birds, on the other hand, don't seem to have a physiological need to do so (they generally lack the same gas-producing bacteria that we do), but they could theoretically produce gas. As for marine invertebrates like oysters, mussels, and crabs? Sadly, they don't fart.

Crabs? No, they don't. © REUTERS/Jamal Saidi By the way, the science of farting is more than just a poop joke. Take livestock, for example. Methane gas emitted by cattle is one of the major contributors to the greenhouse effect. And animal farts themselves are a hot topic that a certain group of scientists want to study.

“Does this thing fart?” is one of the most common questions zoologists get asked by children, says Dani Rabaiotti of the Zoological Society of London. In fact, the whole #DoesThisThingFart journey began when her teenage brother asked her if snakes fart.

Rabiotti knew from her own research that African wild dogs definitely fart, and that seals on the Atlantic island of South Georgia also fart a lot, but she didn’t know much about snakes, so she consulted snake expert David Steen.

The short answer is yes. "Snakes sometimes defend themselves by releasing fecal matter, and that behavior is often accompanied by what I think is a classic fart noise," said David Steen, a wildlife ecologist at Auburn University.

Steen confessed that this was not the first time he had answered this question, which seemed to be one of the most popular questions among teenagers.

“I don’t know if the issue of animals farting can be used as an enlightenment to understand biodiversity, but it’s fun to see people interested in it,” he said. “This topic may be an opportunity to attract more people and bring more people who are interested in it into the discussion.”

And once the goal is to draw in a crowd, the topic itself becomes less important. "Just because you're talking about farts doesn't mean it's necessarily stupid," says Adriana Lowe, a researcher in physical anthropology at the University of Kent in the UK. "The diet and digestive system of different animals is a very important and fascinating area of ​​study, and gas is part of that."

Chimpanzees share many similarities with humans, including intermittent flatulence. © AP/David J. Phillip Lowe, who studies chimpanzees in Uganda's Budongo forest, has found that the animals' farts change as their diets change. "Fruits are louder than leaves, and figs seem to be the loudest," she says.

Occasionally, these physiological abilities even help her in her academic research. "There have been times when I've been with one or two chimps and I haven't noticed the other chimps around until I hear a fart," she says. "Some of them are very persistent and have this gift of 'slowly exhaling gas from a balloon,' which is very useful because it helps you better locate them."

#DoesThisFart is a rare recent phenomenon that has been organized entirely by scientists and embraced by the public. There are also longer-standing hashtags run by individual scientists, such as the scientist Steen mentioned above, who uses the hashtags #NotACopperhead and #NotACottonmouth to identify snakes online. Similarly, Michelle Larue, an ecologist at the University of Minnesota, launched a challenge in which she would post pictures of cats of different sizes and ask followers to guess "#CougarOrNot". Kelly Swift, a doctoral student at the University of Washington, organized a challenge called "#CrowOrNo". (Note: Both challenges are much more difficult than they sound.)

At this point, I think it's time to tell you that I have a hashtag, too. It's called #ButtOfWhat, and its purpose is simple: to entertain and educate by discussing the lower parts of animals. A little childish, you ask? It is. But I guarantee you'll learn a lot from it. (For example, porcupines do a fair amount of squealing during sex.)

That’s why I follow topics like #DoesThisThingFart—everyone has a chance to learn some weird and interesting facts about animals while getting a glimpse into the work of scientists.

“When scientists show their curious side, they’re actually inviting people to participate and letting us discover what we don’t know, and showing us how science works,” says Cassandra Raby, a researcher at the Zoological Society of London who has verified that baboons’ farts can sometimes be as loud as thunder (female baboons with swollen genitals are the worst).

You can also think of this discussion as an opportunity for scientists to share data that might otherwise remain in their notebooks.

“We spend a lot of time studying organisms and discover interesting or quirky behaviors,” said Nick Caruso, a researcher at the University of Alabama who studies salamanders (which don’t fart) and the creator of the #DoesThisThingFarts share. “That kind of information doesn’t usually get out to the public unless it’s directly related to a research paper, so we don’t often get to discuss it.”

A zoo keeper holds a giant African millipede during the annual weigh-in at London Zoo in 2012. © ANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images

Some people are interested in these topic challenges because of the support or data behind them, while others just think they're fun. Me? To be honest, I'm fascinated by butts. And I've already thought of what I'm going to write about next: millipedes.

While most animals expel gas from their soft, fleshy buttocks, millipedes have hard valves (which may be why their farts are silent), said Angie Macias, a graduate student at West Virginia University who studies forest pathology. Not only that, the study found that arthropods can produce a lot of methane in their intestines, and the gas has only one place to go: the backyard.

"In short, I think millipede farts smell really bad and are definitely flammable," Macias said.

In other words, it is silent but potentially life-threatening.

By Jason Bittel

Translated by Ishmael

Proofreading/Rabbit's Light Footsteps

Original article/www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2017/01/11/scientists-are-building-an-animal-fart-database/

This article is based on the Creative Commons License (BY-NC) and is published by Ishmael on Leviathan

The article only reflects the author's views and does not necessarily represent the position of Leviathan