Many of our fellow creatures can let rip – including some insects.
Let’s start with the basics. Farting requires a bottom. Almost all insects possess an anus, so pass this first test with flying colours. However, to break wind, they must also be able to produce hefty amounts of gas in their gut during the digestion process.
Most insects don’t, but several kinds of insect excel at it. The champion farters are species with very high-fibre diets, such as wood and fungus-munching termites and cockroaches that break down rotting organic matter. These insects generate lots of digestive gas, including methane. And it has to go somewhere.
Insect farts are silent – as you might expect, given the size of these animals. Their ‘bottom burps’ don’t really smell, either. However, there are a few insects that can release pretty vile emissions when they want to. For example, the carnivorous larvae of some beaded lacewings, which live inside termite nests and feed on the unfortunate termites, subdue their victims by aiming a foul cloud of intoxicants at them. As Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti point out in their book Does It Fart?, you could say that the lacewing larvae fart their prey to death.
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Main image: a beaded lacewing in Rock Creek Park, Washington, USA. Credit: Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
