10 fart facts

February 5th is National Fart Day! So to, er ... celebrate*, this week the Charles Fudgemuffin blog features ten fart facts! Of course, the Charles Fudgemuffin blog would never stoop to childish humor, so all the folowing fart facts are reported purely for educational purposes. ** shifty eyes **

Uranus, pictured with the other planets of the
Solar System, and also a satellite and a space shuttle.

Note: For the benefit of stupid people, this illustration is not to scale.

* Although perhaps that's the wrong word.

1) Ironically, Uranus smells like farts due to hydrogen sulfide in its atmosphere.




2) In the Malayalam language spoken in south west India, there are two words for farts. One word for when the fart makes a noise and one word for a silent fart.




3) Farting in front of other people is embarassing, but farting in front of our dogs is considered fine. And yet, dogs' sense of smell is fifty times more sensitive than humans*, so our farts smell fifty times stronger to our dogs than they do to us! Poor dogs!

Parp!

* Humans have a mere 6 million olfactory receptors in our noses, whereas dogs have an impressive 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses.




4) A fart expert, or flatulence expert, is known as a flatologist!




5) Only 1% of a fart stinks. Hydrogen sulphide, the gas in a fart that smells, makes up only 1% of fart gas. The other 99% is made up of odourless gases, such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide and methane.*

However, not all farts are identical, so the percentage of hydrogen sulphide varies, which is why some farts are more smelly than others!

* You're probably thinking, "But methane smells like farts!" In actual fact, pure methane has no smell. The smell we associate with methane is added to it artificially to make it easier to detect a methane leak.




6) Farts leave your body at approximately 7 miles per hour. So a healthy adult should be able to comfortably outrun a fart!

Hoof Hearted. Who farted?

Unfortunately I couldn't find a photo of the actual horse named
Hoof Hearted, but I've been assured this horse looks quite similar.

7) Back in the early 2000s, an immature horse owner sneakily named their race horse 'Hoof Hearted'.

If you don't get the joke, say it out loud and think what you would ask if there was an obnoxious smell.





8) The expression 'thorough cough' means to cough and fart at the same time.

Apparently, this is a sneaky strategy used to disguise a fart, or so other people tell me ... but I wouldn't know because I'm too honest to ever consider doing anything like that.

This Queen doesn't fart ... because she's made out of wax!

9) Fortunately, farting isn't contagious like yawning is. But imagine how smelly the world would be if it was!




10) Farts don't discriminate. Young, old, male, female, everybody farts!

Except the Queen, obviously.

If you're looking for more fart facts, then unfortunately you're out of luck because this is my first blog post on farts. However, I often 'recycle' blog post ideas, so I may feature another fart themed blog post at some point in the future.

In the mean time, here are some blog posts where farts get a brief mention, including a rather amusing fart themed Chinese expression:
Surprising statistics (part 2)
Half a million page views!
10 interesting Chinese words and expressions