Obviously blue whales, like all animals, excrete feces and expel gases as a byproduct of their metabolism, a process that could likely be considered a fart by Does It Fart? standards. So, although some of the farts in this book may not fit the strict medical definition of flatulence, they would generally be accepted as a fart to any human encountering them. This, therefore, is the definition used throughout this book. Today the term fart is more commonly used to describe any gas expelled from the end of an animal that is opposite to its mouth-whether this be through the anus, cloaca or a specialized duct-and if it is audible or not. The word "fart" dates back to the fourteenth century, before the term flatulence came into use, and was used specifically to mean breaking wind loudly. Does It Fart provides an admittedly broad definition: These two interpretations could come down to how a fart (referred to in scientific circles as flatus), is defined. The delphinids, particularly the bottle dolphin, have been observed in captivity for years, as far as I know, there is no indication of expulsion of rectal gas. This is true of delphinids (dolphins) and balaenopterids (blue whale and relatives). ![]() ![]() That means they generally do not have the ability to store fecal material or gas. they are animals that have places that they sleep and they don’t want to “foul the nest”.Ĭetaceans, on the other hand are generally not specifically tied to any one area of water and they dispose of their feces continually. Terrestrial mammals have a strong anal sphincter and they accumulate the fecal material to dispose of it in certain places, i.e. "As far as I can determine," said James Mead, Curator Emeritus of Marine Mammals at the Smithsonian Institution via e-mail, "cetaceans do not fart." Cetaceans, the taxonomic group that includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises, he argues, do not really have the ability to build up gas, thanks to their comparatively relaxed anal sphincter - the anal muscle that keeps things air- and watertight most of the time: Not everybody, however, agrees with this conclusion. Whale researchers who have been downwind of these bouts of flatulence report them to be incredibly pungent. Given their size, whale farts are remarkably elusive and have only been captured a handful of times on camera. ![]() Whales, in accordance with their body size, have huge digestive systems, containing a number of stomach chambers which, in the case of the blue whale, combined can hold up to one ton of food. ![]() Blue whales, Balasnoptera musculus, which are currently the largest animal on the planet, likely emit the largest volume (per fart) of any extant species. According to Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti’s aptly titled book Does It Fart?, however, blue whales do, indeed, fart:Īs you can imagine, whale farts are incredibly large. For example, do whales actually fart?īlue whales, krill-eating baleen whales that are largest creatures known to planet Earth, spend most of their time underwater spread out over extremely large ranges, making the observation of farts (and other behaviors) difficult to study. In fact, there appear to be disagreements over even the most elementary aspects of the question. It brings us no joy to report that whale fart science appears too primitive a field of study to produce a clear answer to that query at the moment. One of the most popular flatulence related marine biology "facts" on the internet is the claim that the diameter of a single bubble of flatulence produced by a blue whale could be large enough to contain a horse:
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