Sorry to sound gross but...?

Question

I have heard Elephants give of about 10 gallons of Methane a day. How do they measure flatulence?

Answer 1

Not sure if tis will help but is are parts from a website I found that might answer you question and then some...(Also some info about it being an energy source)

A project that began in August, 2002 develops ways for using elephant and rhino dung for a cheap and environmentally safe energy source. As the dung is fermented, it produces a natural gas that can be used as cooking gas or for a generator. The elephants produce up to 110 pounds of dung per day.

Some power plants have been designed to produce methane gas by digestion of animal manure. The way that digestion works is that the dung from cows, pigs, chickens, and any other farm animals is put into airtight tanks called digesters. Bacteria is then broken down and eventually produces methane gas. The methane is then taken away to remove the nasty smell that it produces and then dried and filtered. The fuel is then burnt for steam production so it can force turbines to turn and create electricity.

Hope this helps you some

Answer 2

To get an idea as to how much methane an individual animal emits, studies around the world have used a variety of techniques.

Some have measured the concentration of methane gas in air emitted from the vents of dairy barns. Others have involved putting a measuring device on an animal's snout.

Some studies have suggested the average cow produces the same amount of greenhouse gas each day as a car that is driven 3.2 kilometres.

Answer 3

Elephants eat mostly plants. Biologists know their metabolism pretty well. Based on that, and knowing how much an elephant eats, it is probably pretty easy to estimate how much methane gas is produced.

Whatever the result, plan-eating dinosaurs were obviously much, much worse in this respect.

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Answer 4

Excellent question.
I'm not sure.
But I do know in California ag producers, like pork farmers have to keep reasonable measures of it for the EPA.
My brother worked on a computer program for a farm.

Answer 5

I have always wondered about that. I keep seeing artcles about how cow flatulence contributes to global warming. Who is going around measuring cow farts? And how do they know that global warming is specifically caused by cow gas, and not people gas?

Answer 6

and were getting the blame for global warming,thats not right.

Answer 7

i dunno, but I sure don't want the job!

Answer 8

rectal methometer. duh.

Answer 9

uhh duh. they measure it with a flatulometer