I& #39;m going to talk a bit about how I ended up becoming an author on top of being a scientist.
It& #39;s a bit of an unorthodox route to becoming an author but bear with me.
Back in January 2011 my brother turned to me and asked & #39;Do snakes fart?& #39;

I realised I didn& #39;t know the answer, but, as I was already fairly active on Twitter I knew someone who would - @AlongsideWild - snake fart expert.
So of course I reached out - turns out @AlongsideWild gets that question quite a lot and he was exasperated with my shenanigans.
Enter @PlethodoNick - salamander expert and all round hero. He suggested we make a hashtag.
And of course, in the true nature of science, I suggested we turn it into a spreadsheet, where people could contribute their study animals.
So this evolved into a resource where zoologists and pet owners contributed facts about different animal farts - which is a pretty useful resource if you are a zoologist because it turns out we get asked about animals farting all the time.
Form there it blew up (pun 100% intended).

Here is me on Canadian TV talking about farts in front of the houses of parliament
In the midst of all this @QuercusBooks wrote to me and @PlethodoNick and were like & #39;Hey! Fancy turning this into a book?& #39;.

Of course we leapt at the chance to do it!
So we went away and wrote it, with guidance from the spreadsheet + our own independent research.

In October 2016 & #39;Does It Fart? The definitive field guide to animal flatulance& #39; hit UK shelves.
It did so well that it was released in the US the following April https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😍" title="Smiling face with heart-shaped eyes" aria-label="Emoji: Smiling face with heart-shaped eyes">
In May 2018 we hit the New York Times bestseller list
https://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/2018/05/12/science/">https://www.nytimes.com/books/bes...
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