If life throws up a bad smell – blame it on the hound dog

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

It was an old trick in many householders that, if you accidentally discharged a pungent odour from the nether regions – and if there happened to be a hapless hound in the vicinity – you always blamed the dog. Many an animal was roused from his quiet slumber with a stern talking to on the art of good manners, especially when there are other people present.

And because dogs still haven’t mastered the art of conversation, they took the blame for a lot of what we used to call trumping before the new President of the United States gave the word a whole different kind of smell.

Occasionally of course it actually was the dog who did the dirty deed – and we all remember some old decrepit mutt whose only contribution to family life was to lie there and give off a honk that would sicken a skunk.

Now – thanks to the sterling efforts of biologists at the Zoological Society of London – comes news of the real animal offenders in this department; and dogs aren’t even in the Premier Division.

Top of the list are hedgehogs – and if they eat fish, it only makes it so much worse – followed by millipedes, who specialize of bomb-drops of the ‘silent but deadly variety’.

Lions too are flatulent offenders – at least sedated ones are, presumably on the basis that it would be foolhardy to try and get close enough to smell one that was fully awake.

Less threatening in an Irish context at least would be the zebra – or indeed the spotted hyena who is particularly pungent after eating camel intestines. Which may well be true for us all, given what a heady concoction we sometimes find after red meat. The impetus of this an online database of animal flatulence came from Dani Rabaiotti, a doctoral student at the Zoological Society of London, who was asked by a relative whether snakes farted.

She referred the inquiry to David Steen, assistant research professor at Auburn University in Alabama – and the answer that came back was yes they do.

So too, it turns out, do tapirs (‘in great amplitude’), orangutans (‘often and with no shame) and snow leopards – none of which should be a cause for concern in this country.

But our domestic pets do merit honourable mention for their efforts.

Read Dave’s column in full in this week’s Connacht Tribune.