I’m serious. I don’t want this thread to be the butt (snicker) of any jokes.
What causes the different types of fart noises? Some are like a pop, some like a toot, and some like a train whistle. And some of course are silent but deadly.
Seeing how farts are caused by air taken into your gullet when you eat, drink or talk I’d think it has something to do with what that air comes in contact with as it passes through your intestines, and the quantity of it therein.
Assuming you are talking about variety within the same individual:
The difference in deadliness is caused by different bacteria acting on different substrates producing different quantities and types of gases (plus some residual aromas from any undigested but aromatic foods).
The difference in sounds is caused by different amounts of air being vibrated in different ways by different tensions in the anal sphincters and different velocities of the air related to the force of expulsion, as well as different appositions of the buttocks (which changes the passageway for the air from the rectum to the outside).
We may not all be LePetomane, but we all sing more than one note.
As my brother used to tell me, there are six kinds of farts: the ‘fizz’, the ‘fuzz’, the ‘fizzy-fuzz’, the ‘rip-shit’, the ‘tear-ass’, and the kind that go ‘pooh’. And what Chief Pedant said.
The following, um, passage used to be in the Merck Medical Manual. (Oh, that gastroenterologist humor!) I think it’s been deleted from more recent editions:
Flatulence, which can cause great psychosocial distress, is unofficially described according to its salient characteristics: (1) the “slider” (crowded elevator type), which is released slowly and noiselessly, sometimes with devastating effect; (2) the open sphincter, or “pooh” type, which is said to be of higher temperature and more aromatic; (3) the staccato or drumbeat type, pleasantly passed in privacy; and (4) the “bark” type (described in a personal communication) is characterized by a sharp exclamatory eruption that effectively interrupts (and often concludes) conversation. Aromaticity is not a prominent feature. Rarely, this usually distressing symptom has been turned to advantage, as with a Frenchman referred to as “Le Petomane,” who became affluent as an effluent performer who played tunes with the gas from his rectum on the Moulin Rouge stage.