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This article was originally blasted out in the spring of 2019.  It received a lot of looks at the time but I felt like it was a bit juvenile and did not fit in with the overall spirit of this blog.  It did not smell right.  So I removed it.  However, in light of recent current events, I cannot hold it in any longer.  I have to let it out.

In a divided country, Americans of every political persuasion can appreciate a good fart joke.  Thank you Eric Swalwell for helping to bring us all together.

Eric Swalwell Uniting Americans

I call this The Lighter Side of UFOlogy.  I was originally inspired to do this by a series of emails back and forth with UFOlogist Kathleen Marden, following an interview I did with her back in May.  She had some concerns about being precise with her words and about scientific rigor.  I told her that for my part:

Don’t worry about it.  I try to take a scientific approach but no one would ever accuse me of being a scientist.  While I’ve been doing some serious stuff lately, a lot of what I write is pure speculation on what I think aliens might or might not do and I try to make it clear to readers that it’s just me making things up (as opposed to some of these people who spread conspiracy theories by preaching falsehoods as the gospel – irksome).  I do a lot of the lighter side of UFOlogy.  That’s probably where my next post will go.

I reiterate, I am not a scientist.  I am just a guy who had a close encounter and has subsequently put a tremendous amount of thought into aliens and UFOs.  And here we are.  Today, I give you The Lighter Side of UFOlogy.

Do Aliens Fart?

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Yeah, I went right for it.  Go ahead and shake your head.  I tackle all the hard-hitting questions, here on ISOT.  Sometimes.  Sometimes not.  This ain't the New York Times, bub.  But the question is valid.  Scroll to the bottom of the article to "Getting more into the Science" if you want to skip the silly stuff and get right into the science.  Read on from here if you have had a long day already and you need a break.

When I type the words "Do Aliens" into Google, the first auto-fill suggestion is not "Do aliens exist" but rather "Do aliens fart?"  It could be that Google reacts differently on my computer than on others.  I am pretty sure my phone, my Google Home, and my Alexa are all listening to me.  Regardless, it is funny that people would tend to skip right over the existential question and go directly for the sophomoric query.  But OK.  Let us take a look at this.

Google does not help much.  There are a couple silly videos on YouTube that are listed, which I will not include because they may violate my site terms.  I found a question on Yahoo Answers from over a decade ago.  The responses were all inane and filled with spelling and grammatical errors.  One anonymous respondent purported to be an actual alien.  He writes:

Believe it or not, I am extraterrestrial. (One day very soon you will finally learn publically that you are not only intelligent highly formed species on your planet. We have been on your planet and have for thousands of years albeit covert. I am from Pleiadian region (M45) in your constellation Taurus. We are actually the forerunner of your species as we have been to Earth as to develop your species some 300'000 Earth years past. Your Scandinavian people in northern Europe are the most direct descendants from us as we are called by your Earthly identifier as 'Nordic Aliens'. (the International Agharti Network) on Earth. 

We as humanoid indeed have similar GI tracts, and though as respect for all living creatures we are predominantly what you call vegetarian. Thus the gas we do emit drom our backside, normally doesn't produce any significant amount of odour. However, there are time when we do emit foul sulphurous smells, do to the high content of sulphur in some of our foods. It its particularly bad (probably actually poisonous to Earth humans).  

As indeed there are many other non human life forms in this universe, there are many of us humanoid forms as well with similar gastro-intestinal tracts. So logic would state that such is common in our universe.

I guess they do not have Spell-Checker on Pleiadian.  Maybe I should give the guy a break.  It is probably hard to type with tentacles.  I would not know.

Another Yahoo Answers respondent, who goes by "Smiley" replied:

Smiley

Yes they do I was obducted one time when I was about 15 and they all where around me and they all did it at one time and they all just laughed and then let me go,I think they eat alot of Broccoli

That was my favorite.  I just gave it an Up Vote.  (Why does Yahoo make it so hard to sign in?  With the account key on the phone mishegas...)

I do not know if they have broccoli on other planets but I have heard it is rare in certain parts of Earth.  The vegetable is a mainstay of Chinese Food in America but I spent a month in Barcelona, about twenty years ago, and went to one of the best Chinese restaurants in town and there was not one broccoli dish on the menu.  I asked the waiter if they had any broccoli in the back and could they throw some in to my dish.  Yes, I am one of those guys that orders off menu.  I will sometimes ask, "Could you throw in a little..." - not all the time, but come on, no broccoli in a Chinese restaurant?

The waiter surmised that, being American, I must be brash and entitled so he ran back and got the owner of the restaurant - it was apparently too much for him to deal with.  I spoke with the owner - nice guy.  He said broccoli is not a thing in European Chinese restaurants, "You must be from The United States."  He supposed it was because it was not as commonly used in Europe.  I do not know if that is true.  But if so, that may explain why there are more UFO sightings in the US.  They come for the broccoli.

Hey, I have heard wilder theories.

Still, do aliens fart?  For real, let us take a serious look at this question.  I have written, a few times, about how artist's renditions of aliens never include genitals.  That could be because people do not want to draw something obscene.  They are simply trying to demonstrate what the face and body looked like and the privates are not important.  But what if they really do not have what we would consider private parts?

Getting more into the Science

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The privates have two functions, reproduction and elimination.  It is possible that humanoid creatures on other planets do not copulate like we Earthans do.  If so, they must be fascinated by our mating rituals.  They would probably watch a lot of explicit imagery - but for research purposes only, you know.  They are not into it.  It was just eleven hours straight of pure research, man.

If aliens do not reproduce the same way that Earthans do, well, I suppose that is the subject of a whole other "lighter side" article.  Stay tuned for that one, kids...

The other function of our private parts is, of course, elimination.  We all remember, back in middle school, that when you were done giggling at the words "anus" and "sphincter" you learned they had important roles in the proper functioning of our bodies.  Without a butt, we would fill up with toxic waste materials and rot away from the inside out.  We need to be able to eliminate this waste.  Included with that is gas.

What do Extraterrestrials Eat?

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Would aliens have the same needs for gaseous elimination as humans?  That would depend on a few things.

• Do aliens eat?
• If so, what do extraterrestrials eat?
• What kind of digestive systems do they have?

On this, apparently Science has a lot more to say.  You have to go to my blog to find out if aliens fart but Time Magazine and Space.com will talk about what they might eat.

In the Space.com article social scientist Christy Spackman suggests that unless visiting aliens were some type of slugs that would eat us, their diets would probably be very similar to ours.  OK so what does that include?  Do they like liver and onions?  Space.com does not say, which is strange, considering the article was about what to serve aliens for dinner.  Instead, the article punts with a suggestion that you feed all of an alien's senses including "15 minutes of standing out in a monsoon rain in August."

Wait, what?  First of all, no way.  Could you imagine, you just flew 90 light years, you are starving, and this crazy lady says, "C'mon, let's go outside in this raging storm and get soaked to the bone.  It's delicious!"  That is Space.com for you.  Second, how do we even know that aliens have the same senses as we do?  Smell may mean nothing to them, for example.  This would explain why when Smiley (above) was "obducted" all his captors thought it was completely appropriate to fart in front of him.

I want to back up to the part about, "unless they are a slug that is eating us."  Are aliens here to eat us?  I have written about this before in Aliens against eating tasty animals wherein I suggested that some aliens may consider all Earthan animals to be on the menu, including humans.  Time.com says no, however.  How do they know?  They do not know anything.  They are making this stuff up, just like I am.  But I will roll with it because they are Time and one is supposed to respect the newsworthiness of such a reputable magazine.  So Time says no, aliens would not want to eat us.  According to quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili,

In order for aliens to get nourishment from eating us, their bodies would have to be capable of processing our molecules (like amino acids and sugars). And that requires having a similar biochemistry–a long shot for a species that hails from a different world.

Thanks Jim!  So people from a different world would may evolve to be able to digest us.  OK.  Still, I am no scientist but I find it hard to believe there would not be a species somewhere out there in the Cosmos which is capable of digesting human.  If you have the intelligence to believe that with all the stars and planets in the Universe, aliens exist in the first place (assuming you have never seen a UFO and are simply accepting the statistics) then you have to also believe that there is a chance that some of them would have a similar diet.  If you can accept that then you can imagine that we might be on the menu.

But let us focus more on where we may share a similar diet.  NewScientist.com asks "WHAT do extraterrestrials eat?"  This article also punts on the question but it does provide some food for thought, so to speak.  You see what I did there?  Like the Time article, New Scientist suggests aliens may have very different building blocks than humans and may therefore need to eat different things which may not grow on our planet.  But they also say that lab experiments were able to show that over several generations, simple cells were able to acclimate to new conditions and process aminos which had previously been toxic to them.  In other words, it is possible to re-engineer a body to derive nourishment from new sources.  We cannot do that here on this planet but if someone can get from there to here, they just may have the technology to re-engineer themselves to eat our food and perhaps even to eat us.  Take that, Time Magazine.

But do aliens eat, at all?  It is possible that some aliens could derive nourishment from sources other than plants and animals.  Certainly we have seen, here on our planet, that it is possible to take in nutrients from the sun via photosynthesis.  I do not know why no one makes a bigger deal about that.  It is amazing that the sun can nourish things.  A lot of problems would be solved in humans could do this too.

Can aliens get nourishment from the stars?  Maybe.  Why not?  If so, perhaps there are other sources of nourishment, somewhere out there.  Dark matter?  That would be something.  So it is possible that some aliens could live without eating.  But they are often depicted as having mouths.  They are also often described as speaking telepathically.  If some of them have mouths but do not need them for speaking, what other purpose would the mouth have other than acting as a pie hole?  Reproduction?  Maybe.  Remind me to never kiss an alien.  More likely, aliens with mouths must eat.

Back to farting, I am breaking new wind - er - ground here, folks.  The root question we have not answered yet is really, do all animals fart?  If so, that would certainly raise the probability that animals on other planets also fart, including the intelligent ones who fly UFOs.  In a Quartz article, health and science reporter Katherine Foley reports that actually, not all animals pass gas.  Foley says:

Birds do not fart, for example, because they have different bacteria that live in their guts that don’t produce the same gaseous byproducts.

Fascinating.  Birds are basically tiny, flying dinosaurs, right?  Can we then assume that the dinosaurs did not fart?  They must have really hated mammals.

The article goes on with an extensive list of Earthan creatures which do or do not fart.  Which ones are on the list is beyond the scope of this discussion.  What is important is the fact that many do not.

The conclusion, therefore, is that I cannot say if aliens fart for certain, one way or the other, because I have never met an alien.  However, I can say that the possibility exists that if aliens have similar building blocks, if they have mouths, if they can derive nourishment from similar foods as we do, and they have similar bacteria in their guts, they certainly could rip a big fart.

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If you have seen an alien spaceship or any type of unidentified flying object (UFO) contact me using the Contact form on this page.  You may remain anonymous if you want.  I will not ridicule you or try to tell you why you are wrong.  I get it, I saw one too.

Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.