Somewhere between a Twitter joke and a peer-reviewed research tool lives #DoesItFart, a crowdsourced spreadsheet maintained by biologists cataloging which animals pass gas and which don’t. It started in 2017 when zoologist Dani Rabaiotti couldn’t answer her teenage brother’s question about snakes, tweeted at a snake expert, and then a third scientist decided this should be a database.
The spreadsheet is exactly what it sounds like. African wild dogs: yes, “any self-respecting canine does.” Snow leopards: yes, muffled by their “floofy bottoms.” Spotted hyenas: yes, and “especially bad after eating camel intestines,” per a carnivore biologist who apparently knows this from experience. Seals: yes, and the fart smells like lutefisk. There is also an entry for unicorns, contributed anonymously, describing the output as “glitter and rainbows soft serve.” The scientists left it in. The non-farters are a quiet minority: blue mussels, moon snails, common whelks – models of restraint.
The whole thing became popular enough that Rabaiotti and her collaborator Nick Caruso turned it into a book, Does It Fart?: The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence, which became a New York Times bestseller and spawned a three-book series. The internet wanted more information on animal farts, and science delivered. Have a good weekend.