Welcome to another column of Flatulence with Cooper. Previous installments can be found here, here, and here. This may or may not be the last installment for the time being, as I sense these articles are getting a little stale around the forums. 

This week's flatulence adventure centers around the kangaroo. From theverge.com, scientists locked kangaroos in a room to measure if their farts contained any bacteria that would be healthy for the environment and curb climate change.

Scientists locked kangaroos in a room to measure their farts. In theory, this was to see if their guts contained bacteria that might reduce methane emissions if placed in other animals’ guts; in reality, this was done because there isn’t much else going on in Australia.

To do that, researchers suggested that kangaroos might have low-methane-emitting bacteria in their guts — bacteria that might be better for the environment than the super gassy bacteria that you find in cow guts. If that were the case, then scientists might be able to transplant those microbes in livestock to make them fart less. That, in turn, would help cows and pigs produce less methane, thus slowing climate change.

As it turns out, kangaroos fart just as much as the rest of us. That would be a lot. Their farts also contain as much methane as cows and pigs. The experiment is what slays me: ten kangaroos locked in a lab, fed various types of food, and scientists gathered around like kids at the Christmas tree waiting for them to rip it. The experiment was all for naught; and somewhere in Australia, there is a researcher crying while watching Kangaroo Jack.