Do Men Or Women Have Smellier Farts? Scientists Sniffed Them To Find Out

Flatulence is a subject that seems to interest researchers quite a bit. Several fart myths are actually based in science, and one particularly disgusting myth has been debunked. One team of scientists even used "smart underwear" to count farts. So, of course science has also gotten around to figuring out the differences between men's and women's farts – by smelling them, no less. Interestingly enough, the research found out that women's farts have more odor.

Don't worry, though, the full reality of the situation isn't quite as simple as that. The 1998 study led by gastroenterology expert Dr. Michael Levitt indeed discovered that all else being equal, women's flatulence contains more hydrogen sulfide than men's, which makes it smell more. However, the researchers also discovered that men's farts have noticeably more volume than women's. So because men release more gas at once, Levitt deemed that their farts can seem just as pungent as women's. 

Studying the smell of farts can seem like the kind of thing that a five-year-old who aspires to be a scientist might come up with. As it happens, even the methology of Dr. Levitt's study would probably greatly entertain a youngster with a very particular sense of humor. 

The study focused on 16 healthy women and men who first ingested pinto beans and a laxative medicine called lactulose. When this highly specific diet inevitably took effect, the subjects wore a flatulence-collecting apparatus fashioned from a tube and a collection bag. The gaseous content of the bags was then meticulously analyzed ... and smelled by two brave judges who rated the odor on a scale of zero to eight. Perhaps mercifully, these sniffers were not told at the time that they were actively rating fart smells.     

At the end of the day, the results of the study seem almost poetic, since the clear differences between the intensity of men's and women's farts are effectively evened out by the difference in gas volume. As such, its seems that in this particular face-off, either everyone is a winner or no one is — depending on how funny you find farts, we suppose.