Can Dogs See Their Own Farts?: The Surprising Truth Behind this Viral Story

Well…can they?! This question has been making the rounds since news of a dog fart study at the Rochester Institute of Technology broke. Researchers were said to have trapped dog and human farts in jars, and then measured dogs’ brain activity in response to smelling them. The story was picked up by a few popular blogs and shared widely.

However, the study in question is fake. We knew it sounded too good to be true! It was published on a discredited, now-defunct fake news site called Iflscience.org. For starters, if you dig into the details of the supposed study, you’ll find that the researchers do not exist—nor does the journal that purportedly published their “findings.” Snopes explains the hoax in this article, which debunks another of that site’s stories.