We may be a step closer to being able to breathe through our butts. A new human clinical trial has shown that it's safe, at least, to deliver oxygen rectally.

It sounds like a joke – and indeed, the research that led to this trial won an IgNobel prize for physiology last year – but there's a good reason behind it. If proven effective, it could become a backup (pun not intended) method for providing oxygen to patients with blocked airways.

The work isn't entirely without precedent. Animals like pigs, rodents , turtles , and some fish are known to be capable of butt-chugging oxygen when the need arises.

The process is called "enteral ventilation", and researchers envisage that in the case of humans, it would involve delivering a perfluorocarbon liquid containing a very high co

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