We’ve all been there. The tense silence, the awkward eye contact, the watery eyes as the aroma of a thousand dead mice wafts delicately between your nostrils. Farts. Sometimes they are the perfect ending to your favorite punchline, other times they are the less than perfect ending to your hot date. Regardless of the occasion in which you experience this outburst of furious flatulence, we all tend to ask ourselves the same question, “Who the hell just farted?”

Recent studies conducted on the subject show that in a blind experiment, users took longer to register the scent of a rip that was their own. They say this is because the bacteria that makes up our toots is unique to every individual person. Yes, that means your trouser cough is the only one in the world like it. When we smell other people’s bacteria, our brain senses danger and therefore we have an alarming, unpleasant reaction to it. However, being bombarded by our own booty coughs all day, we familiarize our self to the scent.  A recent study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania confirms this phenomenon. The study was done with 116 students who were asked their effective impact of different odors. The researchers placed eight conceptual items relating to four domains; “new foods, new places, new cosmetic/ health products and new persons”. The participants were asked how they were personally impacted by what they smelled. The aftermath of the study was quite substantial in the face of “whoever smelt it dealt it”.  It turns out that individual reactions varied in regard to their “odor related memory, differences in attention to odor and differences in the impact of personal associations on liking for odor”. With this in mind, it appears that some people are more effected by smell that others. Thus, such people may be more inclined to be the first to react and “smell it” with indifference to the “dealt it”. On the other hand, we know that most people fall naive to their own toot. It is similar to how teenage boys and naive adults often times wear too much body fragrance as they are unaware of their own alarmingly strong odor.

So, to give this perspective in our overall quest for knowledge, did whoever smell it really deal it? In most cases, no. Whoever smelt it probably was either closest to the epicenter of the crack concert or they were clearly most offended by it. In fact, recent studies have shown that people who are anxious or conservative in nature are more repelled by these scents than others. Reactions to unpleasant stimuli can actually go so far as to tell one’s political leaning. However, whoever dealt it, is likely blissfully ignorant of the atrocious aroma making its rounds across the room. Next time your in the elevator and the hairs on the back of your neck begin to prick up, your fists clench, and your lungs scream for fresh air, look for the nonchalant teenage boy doused in Axe and nuclear refuse.