Yes, it’s true. A team of people have banded together and tested 176 different fart noises to find the ultimate one. The Flatulence Report, for The Beano, have uncovered the answer to a question we’ve all been begging: what are the characteristics of the worlds funniest fart?
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Apparently, the tested fart sounds were diverse and ranged from low to high-pitch, short to long and dry to wet. Not to mention, loud to squeaking. I’m not entirely sure what a “squeaking” fart would sound like but I’m putting bets on hilarious.
Is the funniest thing about this the fart formula itself? Or the fact that someone, somewhere out there in the world set-out to discover it in the first place? Did lead researcher, Dr. Helen Pilcher, really lie awake at night and think, “next thing on my research list: farts”?
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Perhaps the idea was sparked by a half-drunken debate at the pub – “no mate, it’s the long, trumpety ones that are the best” vs. “have you ever heard multiple farts in succession? They’re comedy gold.”
It’s all speculation. But to speculate even further, how exactly did the researchers go about getting these farts to happen? If you’re thinking “surely they didn’t just stick someone in a room and wait for the magic to happen” then your thinking is sort of…correct. Rather than actually farting, a person on the team would stimulate fart sounds using a range of techniques. You can watch the whole thing on Beano’s website.
The was even an audience. An audience of children, to be exact. Their faces were analysed for the level of redness displayed to measure how funny they perceived the fart to be.
Dr. Pilcher told the Huffington Post “the funniest fart is long, loud and ever so slightly wet.”
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The study also found that men find farts 5% funnier than women, children find farts 23% funnier than adults and young adults aged 18-24 are the least entertained – not shocking at all considering we’re all trying so hard to be cool.
In the end, the mathematical formula was developed through analysing the fart’s intensity, length, social embarrassment and the number of children present divided by the age and sex of whoever heard it.
We’re enlightened, to say the least. These findings are far less depresso than most other science-based research. Like that cute finding which revealed how Australia used up a year’s worth of resources by March, for example. In a sea of negative science news perhaps this is the gas… I mean goss, that we really needed.