Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti didn’t set out to become the Internet's designated animal fart experts, and certainly didn't expect to write , but you can't shake destiny. In January 2017, Rabaiotti's teenage brother asked her if snakes fart. She tweeted at a scientist hoping to get an answer.

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@AlongsideWild a family member asked me the other day if snakes fart and i did not know the answer to their question. So do they? 🐍🔊 — Dr Dani Rabaiotti - True or Poo kids out now! (@DaniRabaiotti) January 8, 2017

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She got one, but also a sigh, from a Phd student at Zoological Society, London. Unsurprisingly, as Rabaiotti told the Washington Post, it turns out that fart questions are among the most common that zoologists receive. For one thing, it's something beyond the basic functions of eating and sleeping that we might have in common with animals which makes it an obvious question for humans to ask. But also farts are pretty funny no matter the species. Animal lovers across the Internet started picking up on the conversation.

Watching on Twitter, University of Alabama Ph.D candidate Nicholas Caruso decided that to try and help Rabaiotti "make #doesitfart a thing, because clearly people want to know," he tells Popular Mechanics. "So then Dani suggested that we make a spreadsheet to get more answers on different animals. We did that and we had a surprising response to it."

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Editable (let me know if it doesn't work) google sheet, for all your #DoesItFart needs

Feel free to share & update!https://t.co/6doRyMXDS2 https://t.co/eQaobC5r8k — Dr. Nick Caruso (@PlethodoNick) January 8, 2017

The spreadsheet snowballed, one answer leading to five more leading to ten more after that. People with all variety of animal in their homes started sending in answers, scientists across the globe adding things and fact-checking.

"I was actually playing soccer that day," Caruso recalls of the moment when the spreadsheet blew up. "I finished up playing after a couple of hours and I looked at my phone and all of a sudden had tons of notifications on Twitter and stuff and it was just like, holy cow, this blew up!"

Within a week the two had gotten a book offer, the results of which are on sale today as . But turning the spreadsheet into a book required a little work legwork.

A school of fish practicing a lost art of communication. Ethan Kocak/Hachette Books

"We started looking at primary evidence—our own knowledge of animals," he says. "And then first hand knowledge from other scientists and zookeepers, and then once we went past that we started diving into the scientific literature, of which there is a surprising amount." Caruso cites the herring as a particularly surprising example: scientists speculate that the fish use farting to communicate.

Both Rabaiotti and Caruso were surprised to find the proud history of animal farting in colloquialism around the world. "There was a Bedouin proverb that went, 'the mongoose farted among them,' it was about an irreconcilable group that could not come back together. The belief was that a mongoose fart could disperse camel herds and they would never come back, it was that bad."

While farting may strike some more stodgy people as crass, Caruso still thinks it's a subject worth dwelling on. "Our answer is, whatever gets people through that door to be interested in science is a good thing. They may just be interested in a silly subject like farts, but we pack in a lot of information about species, about evolution, their importance. We get them in the door with the silly stuff but being able to talk about animals in that broader context is incredibly important."

They're already seeing a positive effect, thanks to an early release in the UK. "Someone sent us a Twitter message talking about their kid," Caruso says, "their kid told them that this book has a lot of scientific terms. The parents were like, 'Oh, do you want us to help you? And the answer the kid gave was 'No, there's a glossary in the back!'"

Writing a book on farting tends to give off a reputation, which Caruso says both he and Rabaiotti relish.

"At this point, being known as 'that fart guy' or 'that fart gal,' those are two great things to be known for."

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