This is scientific American's 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intalyata. Got a minute?

The global population is now nearly 7.5 billion.

And that's just humans, because our planet's also home to 1.5 billion. And that's just humans, because our planet's also home to one and a half

billion cows, another billion sheep, and a billion goats. Their combined

belches account for a full fifth of the world's methane emissions,

and methane's about 30 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2.

But those methane emissions might get cut

by feeding the grazers something called three nitrooxy propinol.

And I can tell you they like it.

No rejection at all.

Mike Kinderman, an organic chemist at DSM nutritional products in Switzerland.

Liking it in the cow world, he says, basically means they'll still gobble up their food

even with this stuff mixed in.

Kinderment's company developed the additive a few years back.

It jams up an enzyme crucial to the

production of methane by microbes that live inside the animals, and it only targets

those methane-belching microbes while leaving the rest of the microbiome untouched.

The result, a 30% decrease while leaving the rest of the microbiome untouched.

The result, a 30% decrease in methane emissions.

The study is in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kinderman says he thinks the compound could be a win-win for the planet and the animals.

You know, the methane is kind of a waste product and this energy instead of losing it for the animal,

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