# Do ants fart? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2010, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938 "2010-02-14T06:21:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Visual\_Purple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5daacb/32.png) [@Visual\_Purple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Visual_Purple)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/21 "2010-02-15T15:13:03Z")
I thing that **Shmendrik** is asking the right sort of question. My impression is that methane is often a product of cellulose breakdown, which is something multicellular types like cows and termites can only do with the aid of gut symbionts. I don’t think any ants have such symbionts. Leafcutter ants, however, use cultivated fungi to break down cellulose to a form they can digest. I don’t know if fungal breakdown of cellulose produces methane or not. If it does, even if ants themselves don’t fart, their colonies could. ETA: Human methane production, IIRC, is the result of what happens when our guts encounter three-unit sugars. Digestion of beans produces such sugars. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/22 "2010-02-15T16:35:40Z")
> [@ZSPHOBIASZ](#): > > . . . I know this because people eat other animals like cows, and if there werren’t mroe cow than people than people would run out of cow pretty quickly. > > We still have many cows. The areas of highest human population tend also to base their diets on things other than beef consumption, and very few groups eat beef daily. Cow’s milk is more ubiquitous, but we don’t dispose of the cow to collect it. Perhaps more to the point, no human ever ate a whole cow - one steer can feed hundreds of people. > [@DMark](#): > > . . .However, it would be interesting to know what an ant fart smells like - so, in an effort to fight ignorance, I promise that this summer I will get a bunch of ants drunk on beer and baked beans - then pull out a straw, bend down and stick that straw in my nose and inhale. > > I’ll get back to you. I’m willing to lay 5-1 odds that they smell like dill. Any takers? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/23 "2010-02-15T19:43:22Z")
> [@Peanuthead](#): > > Ants vs. Peanuthead > Okay, I accept the cahllenge. Send 'em out one by one. 😃 Ahhh…that’s the kind of stuff I came here for. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/24 "2010-02-16T00:28:46Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > Perhaps more to the point, no human ever ate a whole cow - one steer can feed hundreds of people. Well, not all at once. Our family has certainly done it many times. We either slaughter one of our own cattle (back when we had cattle), or bought a whole beef from a rancher friend. It goes in the freezer, and we spend a year eating it. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/25 "2010-02-16T00:46:47Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > \ > > I’m willing to lay 5-1 odds that [ants’ farts] smell like dill. Any takers? 😉 Dill? 😕 Hoity-toity ants think their shit don’t smell. [BTW, as the OP, I will soon re-phrase and clarify this research program, taking into account the comments in this thread. I’ll stroke your backs when I’m ready.] ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/26 "2010-02-16T18:06:36Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > The presence of phosphoric acid in larval anal liquid demonstrates that red imported fire ants excrete phosphoric acid. Is there an award for redundancy? I know scientific literature is supposed to spell everything out… but jeez! As to the original question, the methane in flatulence is often over-rated. You get methane in both cows and termites to such a large degree because of bacteria digesting cellulose in an anaerobic process that provides nutrition to the animal. Neither humans nor ants can get nutrition out of hay or wood because we lack the proper bacteria and/or digestive tract… thus, there’s a lot less methane produced. Human flatulence has a lot of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide and other components - not just (or even primarily) methane. ---
**Author:** ![Carptracker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac91a4/32.png) [@Carptracker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carptracker)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938/27 "2010-02-17T03:21:00Z")
> [@ZSPHOBIASZ](#): > > No. There many different kinds of ants, but they are all ants. Thinking they are different is bad, people also come in different kinds, but it is ignorant of you to say they are not all people. Like all different ants are ants so if you want to compare something to all mamals remember that all kinds of ants are insects, like spiders, or slugs so you would weant to comepare insects to mammals. > > But more importantly krill are the most massive species. But that is only animal species, plants are more massive still. Humans are not even one of the biggest animals. I know this because people eat other animals like cows, and if there werren’t mroe cow than people than people would run out of cow pretty quickly. > > We still have many cows. You can get an upside down shaped biomass pyramid, if the turnover in the things lower on the food chain is very high. So if cows reproduce and grow quickly, there could be less of them than us. And we don’t eat ONLY cows. I’m surprised that krill have the most biomass of any species on the planet. Are krill one species only? If we are talking larger groups than a single species, it would depend on how wide you made the groupings. I would have put my money on some kind of bacteria, or perhaps nematodes, which really are hugely abundant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-ants-fart/528938.md?page=1)