# why does my fart stink like pig shit? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 4, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522 "2014-02-04T21:46:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/41 "2014-02-06T14:31:19Z")
> [@Ellen\_Cherry](#): > > Piggies _graze_? Pigs eat almost anything. Put them on a pasture and they’ll eat the grasses, then dig up the ground to eat the roots. Some of my fellow pastured pig farmers claim their pigs will even eat lawn clippings, but mine have always turned up their snouts at that. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/42 "2014-02-06T15:29:17Z")
> [@August\_West](#): > > Pigs eat almost anything. Put them on a pasture and they’ll eat the grasses, then dig up the ground to eat the roots. Some of my fellow pastured pig farmers claim their pigs will even eat lawn clippings, but mine have always turned up their snouts at that. Pigs may _eat_ grass, but it’s my understanding that they can’t digest cellulose --like humans, they don’t have the gut flora that cows and other ruminants have. So they get no nutritional value from chomping down grass. Pigs will eat a lot of plants – nuts, roots, seeds, fungi (this is why they use pigs to hunt for truffles), but an awful lot of it is stuff people can eat. Anthropologist Marvin Harris made the claim that taboos on eating pig in the Middle East (not only Muslims and Jews proscribed pig – so did the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians) were rooted in the fact that pigs and people competed for the same food. [http://www.ehow.com/info\_8788820\_do-pigs-digest-cellulose.html](http://www.ehow.com/info_8788820_do-pigs-digest-cellulose.html) Pigs, being omnivores (again, like people), will apparently gladly eat meat, too. ---
**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2014, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/43 "2014-02-06T18:24:50Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Pigs may _eat_ grass, but it’s my understanding that they can’t digest cellulose --like humans, they don’t have the gut flora that cows and other ruminants have. So they get no nutritional value from chomping down grass. Pigs will eat a lot of plants – nuts, roots, seeds, fungi (this is why they use pigs to hunt for truffles), but an awful lot of it is stuff people can eat. Anthropologist Marvin Harris made the claim that taboos on eating pig in the Middle East (not only Muslims and Jews proscribed pig – so did the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians) were rooted in the fact that pigs and people competed for the same food. > > Pigs, being omnivores (again, like people), **will apparently gladly eat meat** , too. Bolding mine. I was showing a potential customer around our farm a few years ago and we walked down to the pig pasture. As we stood there looking at the pigs, a couple of baby barn swallows fell or jumped out of their nest. One of the sows immediately spun around and gobbled them up. We could hear the little bones crunching and see feathers sticking out of her mouth. My customer turned a little green, but he did end up ordering half a pig from us! ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/44 "2014-02-10T21:46:52Z")
We all saw _Hannibal_ too. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2014, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/45 "2014-02-10T21:55:01Z")
Lactose intolerance will produce foul smelling gas. I had a bowl of smoked salmon chowder last night and paid the price. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/46 "2014-02-11T02:23:33Z")
After seeing the thread title, I was _really_ disappointed that **Freddie the Pig** wasn’t the OP. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2014, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522/47 "2014-02-11T02:28:10Z")
> [@Mauvaise](#): > > What message board have you been reading all these years?! 😕😛 There are plenty of armchair doctors here that love to play the “Guess the ailment” game. Is that anything like [Beat the Reaper](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3zZ_ih0Jpc)? 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-fart-stink-like-pig-shit/680522.md?page=2)