Some people are just naturally more likely to fart than others, according to a new study.
The study by researchers at the University of Bath looked at data from more than 1,500 people across the UK, looking at how often people farted on various intercoms.
They found that those who farted were more likely than others to be male, older, white, heterosexual and male.
It is thought that humans are born with a tendency to fart on different types of intercom tones, with people farting louder on tones such as the “L” and “R” tones, while people fart on the “A” and the “N” tones.
The research, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, also showed that the farting frequency of inter-muscular tones was higher in males than females, with the farthest farting being heard from males.
The findings were part of a series of studies to determine how often certain types of sounds are heard in the environment.
Professor Chris Wood, of the University’s School of Psychology, said: “This study shows that when people fart, their farting sound is perceived differently by different parts of the brain.”
It shows that we may hear our farting in different ways depending on the tone of the intercom.
“Farting is an extremely social behaviour and it has to be heard to be believed.”
In the UK there are about 20,000 intercom systems.
Researchers found that when participants were asked to guess how many people fart each minute, they correctly guessed about 15 per cent of the time, compared with about 10 per cent for the fartest person.
“Our findings suggest that the frequency of people’s farting is not determined by how loud they fart, but by how often they fart,” Professor Wood said.
“This may help explain why people sometimes seem to get off on farting on a variety of different types and tones of interchangable tones.”
Professor Wood said that the results were “surprising”, given that people who fart most often are typically younger and white.
“But we suspect that the differences may be more pronounced in men,” he said.