Asked by: Lorely Maskell


Birds have an anus, and so technically could fart, but to date there’s been no official evidence that they do. One theory is that they don’t need to fart like humans and other mammals because they have a faster rate of digestion – their food simply doesn’t spend long enough in their short gastrointestinal tracts to ferment and form gas. Another theory is that birds’ guts don’t contain the same gas-forming bacteria as mammals. It’s also possible that ornithologists have missed bird farts because they leak out passively rather than in one eruption, or birds could be burping to release unwanted gas instead.

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