If only cows were more like kangaroos... and women more like men

Two intriguing stories about that other significant source of greenhouse gases: flatulence! First, scientists down under want to make cow guts more like Kangaroo guts, because the latter have virtually no methane while the former are well-known as significant actors in global warming. How do the 'roos do it? Apparently they have different bacteria in their guts resulting in a cleaner burn of the food they eat. Now if only they can isolate those bacteria and get them to thrive in cow guts - not only would the cows fart less dangerously, but they might even extract more energy out of their food; meaning more bang for the feed dollar for the farmer - or is that less bang, but more meat... well something like that at any rate. Something to make both the farmer and the environmentalist happy, eh? I'm picturing driving your cow up for a periodic smog test, failing which the cow gets some probiotics... if only it turns out to be that easy! Meanwhile, a leading expert on the underappreciated field of flatus (or only expert? are there many who can claim expertise in the study of farts as opposed to mere production thereof?) has determined, through a double blind study (although I'm sure the participants ended up wishing some other sense organ had been shut down in this case), that even though women fart less frequently than men, they make up for it because their product is more... ah... aromatic! Here's how this experiment is described:

The study was the first ever attempt to provide an objective evaluation of the odour of flatus, Levitt [that would be Dr. Michael Levitt, father of economist Steven Levitt, who wrote the best-seller Freakonomics] explains. Volunteer judges, blinded to the identity of the generating gender, were asked to rank the potency of the end product. Volunteer producers -- primed by a diet of pinto beans -- farted into aluminum bags via a rectal tube. The contents of the bags were measured for volume and for sulphur concentration. (Sulphur gases give farts their foul odour.) Syringes full of gas were withdrawn from the bags and wafted by the nostrils of the unfortunate judges. "Some journal reviewed the worst jobs ever performed in science and this became the number 1,'' Levitt says with a chuckle. "Now I might say the judges were paid well. Some of them complained of being dizzy and having a headache at the end of session.'' The conclusion: "Women had more sulphur gas and were judged to have more potent odour.'' Sulphur gases make up a tiny fraction of the overall volume of farts, Levitt says. But if that punch is concentrated, well, watch out. "Individual passage of gas by males is appreciably greater than the individual passage by females -- in volume,'' Levitt explains. "So females could have a higher concentration of sulphur gases but the total amount passed per passage would be about the same.''

Silent, but deadly - indeed! The article concludes with some fun flatulent factoids of which this one stands out:

• Blue angels: Only certain people have bacteria in the gastric systems that produce methane, Dr. Levitt says. And only methane-producers can perform the time-honoured frat house trick of igniting a blue flame when they hold a match to an escaping fart.

There are those bacterial differences again... and can one interpret Dr. Levitt to be suggesting that reducing methane might be more a matter of eliminating certain bacteria than adding ones from other species? Are there any bacterial differences between individual cows's guts, I wonder? Clearly, this important subject hasn't received nearly enough attention from scientists, despite the best efforts of a certain postdoc advisor of mine, from back when I literally shoveled scheisse (of the avian kind, mind) while working in the lab of Ethological, Neural and Endocrine Mechanisms in Animals. 'nuff said! (Hat tip to Prem Panicker)