This Quiz Stinks

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Who said "Fish and visitors smell in three days"?

Answer: Benjamin Franklin

While the quote is nearly always attributed to Ben Franklin, only a rotten egghead would know that the idea was first recorded by John Lyly in his novel of 1580 "Euphues & his England". Franklin published the quote as we know it in "Poor Richard's Almanack" in 1736.

2. When bodies decay, several stages of decomposition have been identified. Before putrefaction and butyric fermentation ever happen, the enzymes of the body actually cause cell structure to fail in a process named from two Greek words for "self" and "split". What name is given to the first stage of decomposition?

Answer: autolysis

Who cares? If you're somewhere between autolysis and dry decay, they can call it whatever they want and who are you to argue? But for the fussy, the stages are: fresh decomposition, putrefaction, black putrefaction, butyric fermentation, and dry decay.

3. Mostly all mammal feet are divided into three categories based on which part of the foot bears the weight of the animal. How are the feet categorized for dogs, Danes and deer respectively?

Answer: digitigrade, plantigrade, unguligrade

While there is the potential for all three types of feet to smell just as rank, plantigrade animals stand on their whole foot, digitigrade animals go about on tippy toes and unguligrade animals just hoof it everywhere. Some burglars and teenagers past their curfew have been known to be digitigrades as well.

4. Your poor beagle has popped home from her neighborhood trash bag tour with the sickening smell of freshly sprayed skunk. Which of the following is the best treatment for her?

Answer: sodium bicarbonate and hydrogen peroxide

Granddad's old method that works best is: mix up a quart of mother's hydrogen peroxide from the medicine cabinet with a quarter cup of sodium bicarbonate (that's the baking soda she keeps in the fridge to absorb odor). Add a dash of dish detergent and shampoo your pooch immediately. Rinse thoroughly. I wouldn't let her on the bed for a day or two. Tomato juice will not remove the smell. Lemon juice is only for mother's baking and it will upset her if you use it. Perfume is far too expensive and won't work anyway. You've got to make that little bottle last until next Christmas, or maybe even the Christmas after that.

5. Flatulence is caused when bacteria breaks down one's dinner, thereby creating new compounds, some of which are helpful to the body and others of which are unwanted waste. What is the least commonly created compound (referred to as "flatus")?

Answer: methane

Contrary to popular legend, flatus contains as much as ninety percent nitrogen, then hydrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and then methane in descending quantities. Humans are very aware and concerned about how and where this flatus is expelled by the body. Rock concerts and swimming pools seem to be okay places. Churches and elevators are places that cause the body greatly increased stress.

6. You walk out into your peach orchard in the southeastern United States and notice a peculiar smell. Looking up into the tree, you see the image of a grinning cat looking at you and notice that all of the peaches look like smiling cats to you. What or whom should you suspect?

Answer: euschistus servus

The brown stink bug, (euschistus servus) is a pest that affects fruit crops in the southern United States. After the stink bug has injured the immature peach's tissue, the surrounding, healthy fruit grows around the scar forming what resembles a cat's face. You have no reason to fear a flashback of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Lewis Carroll was the author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in which the Cheshire cat appeared in the tree, grin first. Duane Allman coined the phrase "Eat a Peach" just before his tragic motorcycle death in 1972, thus providing the Allman Brothers Band with the name for their subsequent album.

7. This cheese is well known for smelling like human feet. This is because the bacterium used to ferment it (brevibacterium linens) is actually found on human skin.

Answer: Limburger

Originally the area between Aachen and the Meuse River, Limburg has now been absorbed into Germany, Holland and Belgium. Most Limburger cheese today is made in Germany and in Wisconsin, which I think speaks well of the Belgians and the Dutch.

8. Cod is soaked in water for a week, bathed in lye for the weekend, then soaked in water for another week, and when you get home Friday, you have what gelatinous delicacy to look forward to?

Answer: lutefisk

Because of its acrid smell and unique taste, lutefisk is a Scandinavian-American oddity which some claim with ethnic pride and others with, well, less than pride. "Putting lutefisk under our porch sure drove the raccoons away, but now we got Norwegians under the house!"

9. Said to smell like rotten eggs, sulphur, in actuality, has no smell until it is combined with other elements to make hydrogen sulfide (sewage) or sulphur dioxide (matches). Sulphur doesn't seem to care where it finds its friends. What is sulphur's atomic number?

Answer: sixteen

Sulphur joins carbon (6), phosphorous (15) and selenium (34) as the only elements which are solid, primordial and non-metal. Sulphur should have heeded the age old advice against keeping bad company, seeing as how it has attained such an unsavory, if undeserved reputation.

10. If you have answered 1-9 correctly, you should be able to use the first letter of each correct response to sniff out the theme uniting these questions.

Answer: bad smells

All questions are related to things that stink, which ought to remind you that you really should be cleaning out the fridge and emptying the garbage instead of sitting here playing trivia.

Source: Author sidnobls

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor LeoDaVinci before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

"Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes today and is gone tomorrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench." - Mark Twain The first letter of the first 9 answers spell out the answer to question 10.

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