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The Vomit Worth Millions?
ozmanjusri writes "ABC is reporting that a family in Australia recently found a large lump of ambergris, which they believe may be worth millions. It is a fascinating material, created by a sperm whale's intestine in response to irritation, probably caused by the undigested beaks of squid. The waxy mass is coughed out by the whale during a belch which is reported to be audible kilometers away, and is a putrid stinking mass. Floating in salt water and exposure to sunlight for ten years or more matures the waxy blob into a grey, sweet smelling solid which is used as a base for perfumes. Although the family may be able to sell the ambergris, it cannot be used in Australia or the US, since both countries are signatories to the Washington Treaty, which bans the trade of musk deer and whale products for perfume."
Ambergris is classified as a product of a whale under Australian law, so the family is unable to sell it commercially. It can be sold for research purposes but it requires permits for export. The most they can do with it in Australia is donate it to a museum or use it as centerpiece for their dining room table.
Got Shadowrun? Awakened Worlds
It's actually more often than not illegal to posess it - as it's a product of an endangered species - if they don't burn it, and soon, they could find themselves doing jail time.
Almost true. Actually, all whales in the dominion are the property of the queen, and if there is one, the king - the tail of the whale is the queen's property (for her whalebone corsets) and the rest is the king's - for the meat and blubber.
In 1970 the queen voluntarily repealed her right to this law, however lords refused to pass the motion, so the queen does still own all whales.
That said, the natural history museum has first dibs on any marine animals to wash up on british coastline.
But in chapter 91 of Moby Dick, The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud, Stubb fast talks a French whaler out of a dead bloated whale, and then harvests a purse of ambergris directly from its bowels.
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Stubb to the French Captain via a symapthetic interpreter: Thank him heartily; but tell him it's against my principles to drink with the man I've diddled.
...Read "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind for more information on disgusting substances used in the perfume industry. Its also a hell of a good story.
If you think whale barf is bad, check out civet.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
As I posted elsewhere:9 &cid=14557197
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17505
The danger is that if this stuff was commercially viable, you could go out, kill a dozen whales, find the one that had some vomit in its stomach, stick that vomit in a saltwater tank for ten years, and sell the result.
In some ways, it's a lot like forbidding the sale of elephant ivory: after all, you can collect the tusks of dead elephants from the secret elephant burial grounds with no harm to the elephant population, right?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Get yer self a Grays. The tube from the kidney to the bladder is the Ureter and, I've read, about the size of a pencil lead. You're thinking of the Urethra, which is quite a bit bigger, although I'm sure it wasn't pleasant there either. I've known a grown man doubled up on the floor of a car while the pressure of urine backing up in his kidney pushed a stone through the ureter to his bladder. Yikes. I get the attempted joke here but jeez, this is your body, you ought to know a little something about it. Perhaps you're thinking of bladder stones, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.