The broken promise

Did you know …

That a giraffe will only flatulate (or “fart”) once in its entire life? It’s true!

When I say “a giraffe,” of course I’m referring to giraffes in general, and not a particular giraffe out there somewhere. You see, giraffes have evolved so that the gastral valve that typically allows the byproducts of ruminant digestion to vent (or, to put it in layman’s terms, that allows an animal to “pass gas”) is sealed shut—it is essentially a vestigial organ. However, giraffe digestion still produces gaseous byproducts. Evolutionary biologists are somewhat stumped as to why giraffes have lost the ability to “tear ass”; some theorize that the lifetime accumulation of lighter-than-air gases inside the giraffe’s body may help the animals stand so tall without falling over, although the lifting power of these gases next to the simultaneously produced heavier-than-air gases and the giraffe’s own substantial body mass seems negligible. And even if significant lift were generated, the advantages of superior height likely wouldn’t outweigh the relief provided by “exorcising a ghost turd.”

Ah, but we remember that it’s not that giraffes never “break the shit bank,” it’s that they do it only once in their lifetimes. When does this occur? In the moment before the giraffe’s death, naturally. You see, every giraffe will, assuming it reaches adulthood, arrive at a point of critical internal pressure. Without fail, this situation relieves itself catastrophically. That’s right—this is why giraffes explode. The tremendous explosion at the end of every giraffe’s life is in fact its single, glorious, deadly fart, serving to eviscerate any nearby predators and spread the giraffe’s spores far across the savannah. (Whether or not giraffes reproduce through asexual spore dispersal isn’t clear, but it is another proposed explanation for their end of life behavior.)