Top trumps
Record breakers: Termites might be tiny but there are so many of them that their farts make up 3% of the world’s total annual methane emissions – a whopping 20million tonnes.
Silent but deadly: It would be more, if not for the beaded lacewing larvae that can stun six termites with a chemical in a single fart. The effect lasts three hours – time enough to eat their prey.
Pesty pong: A cockroach can give off a hefty 35 kilos of methane every year. That’s a salvo of stinks 43 times bigger than their average body weight.
Gas attack: Wily honey badgers pass wind aggressively. They use the smell of their guffs to ward off bees so that they can steal the insects’ honey. Meanwhile, ferrets are often startled by their own farts.
Having a pop: Sonoran coral snakes use farting for self-defence.
The reptile pulls air into a bum-like part of its body and releases it, making a noisy pop to scare predators away.
Cutting the cheesy: Baboons let rip to woo each other when mating and male hippos use the strength of their farts to impress females. Lemurs have fart fights with rivals.
Egg-streme: Zookeepers say that the fishy funk given off by seals and sea lions is the worst-smelling of all animal farts. Yet llamas are said to have the sweetest-smelling bottom burps.
Chuffing champs: It’s reckoned that zebras are the loudest farters in the animal kingdom, with their rip-snorters sometimes heard miles away.
Pump up the volume: Blue whales emit the biggest farts on the planet. Each one can make a 200-litre bubble big enough to fit a horse inside.
Moo are joking: Cows can produce 500 litres of methane a day. In 2014 a herd of 90 of them managed to burn down a barn in Germany when their farts were sparked by static electricity.
Ultimate blow-off: The bolson pupfish, found in Mexico, feasts on gas-producing algae that make its belly swell. If it doesn’t fart, a build-up can cause the fish to explode. Meanwhile, herring communicate with each other using farts.
It’s a floater: Manatees need their digestive gases to stay afloat. They store their farts to make themselves more buoyant.
Parp-timers: Weak bum muscles mean frogs and salamanders could fart, but probably don’t. Boffins are trying to work out if bats and spiders fart.
Toot much: Sloths digest their food so slowly, their bodies don’t produce farts. The methane is absorbed by their bloodstream and breathed out. Octopuses and birds don’t fart either, nor do sea anemones – but experts say they have terribly stinky burps.