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We were listening to NPR but not really listening to it while we were bullshitting around like we always do, talking about nothing in particular. And then I let one slip. Well, I guess slip isn’t the best word since a slip is usually inaudible. I guess this was the exact opposite of a slip, really.

Anyways, we both burst out laughing and it got me wondering, how and why is a fart so funny and when did this happen? Think about it. I’m no Scientonomist(*), but I can logically say that human beings have been farting for most, if not all, of our existence. And I’d reckon that animals have pretty much been passing gas as long as they’ve been walking the Earth and swimming the seas. Wait, do fish fart? I googled it and it turns out that scientists don’t know for sure if fish fart. Let me repeat that: scientists don’t know for sure if fish fart!

(*) It’s a real word. Look it up.

So, we can reasonably say that animals have been farting for roughly as long as life has existed. If you’re a creationist, that’s around 6,000 years. 6,000 years to get used to farting. That’s a long time. And just so we’re clear, I am a creationist. An ardent one at that.

And if you’re into the whole fruity evolutionary tall tale, animals have been farting for roughly a billion years, give or take a few eons. The point is that we have had a long time to get used to sudden, audible, well-timed flatulence(**), and yet we are generally impervious to it’s tickling of our funny bones.

(**) Not a real word.

We’ve been farting for almost as long as we’ve been breathing and yet it still makes us laugh. A fart joke is one of the most basic unfunny jokes out there and yet a real, genuine audible fart is absolutely gangbusters. How is this possible?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:25 am and is filed under I'm just saying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.