7 Bizarre Uses for Animal Secretions

you know animals they give us lots of things or rather we take lots of things from animals food clothing free labor and sometimes companionship everyone knows about down pillows leather shoes guano fertilizer honeycombs and cheeseburgers you probably also know about the devastation caused by the black market trade of animal parts and extracts used in so-called traditional medicine like rhino horn powder bear bile tiger bones all of which I'm here to tell you was total bunk but for centuries humans have been sneaking animal secretions into lots of things you probably don't know about like your Easter candy and your mom's perfume and even that cigarette you really shouldn't be smoking and we also continue to enjoy delicacies that are only made possible because they come out of some animals mouths glands and yes butts so how many secretions have you slathered on or ingested lately I guess first you're going to have to find out what they are and how they get into your body you let's begin with one of the most widely used but little-known secretions you probably interact with cast Oreo castoreum not to be confused with castor oil which is made from castor beans is a yellowish secretion produced in the castor sacs of adult beavers these sacs are located near the animals genitals and the rodents mix their secretions with urine to mark their territories the stuff smells strong and musky so no surprise that long ago some productive perfumer started using it in manly fragrances for a hint of leather in fact those sweet smokey stylings were so appealing to the human nose some genius thought hey let's put it in cigarettes and Kasturi in' became one of the 600 federally approved cigarette additives if you want another reason to avoid smoking just look at that terrifying list so that's not even half of it ever looked at the ingredient list on a carton ice cream or bag of candy Corman wondered what exactly all those dubious natural flavorings are Food and Drug Administration lists castoreum as G Ras or a generally recognized as safe food additive although it's clearly not safe for those poor beavers so beavers aren't the only musk machines out there civets are Viveiros omnivorous mammals with long bodies short legs and long tails that looked like a cross between a weasel and a cat and there are over 15 different species that range from Africa to Southeast Asia humans have long courted civets for their sweet-smelling musk traditionally used as scent and fixative and perfume the oil is produced to the animals perineal glands which are yes near its genitals and humans harvest the valuable musk either by removing the glands from a dead civet or in modern times scraping the glands out with a special tool this task is as difficult as it sounds and can be very painful to the animal if done incorrectly because of this many fragrance houses are moving away from civet oil and favor of synthetic alternatives although it is still used today by some but humans use civets for an even more bizarre purpose poop coffee yes friends that is thing Kopi Luwak is an Indonesian coffee made from coffee beans that have been to put it politely pre processed by Asian Palm Civet see animals eat the raw beans partially digest them and then defecate folks collect and clean the leftovers apparently dengan a smooth caramel II finish must really be something because a pound of the stuff cost nearly $250 making it the world's most expensive coffee and it's incidentally critics say it tastes like burnt stale Folgers in addition to the whole emperor has no clothes element here the production process can be inhumane while civets in the while voluntarily eat berries leaving their excrement behind this poop coffee craze has resulted in some operations keeping civets and small cages under great stress so if you got 100 bucks burning a hole in your bucket and you like the sound of a cup of Kopi Luwak please look for unethically sourced company to waste your money on speaking of food I don't want to eat we got to talk about bird's nest soup you might think that this popular Asian delicacy is made from any old bird's nest like grab a robin's nest toss it in a pot with some celery and onions and boom you got a soup but what sounds less appetizing than eating a bunch of poopy feathered sticks how about a bowl of bird spit maybe several species of Asian swiftlets weave their nests entirely out of hardened strands of their own gummy saliva males build these nests on cave walls whereupon industrious humans come calling once collected and clean these nests are sold to restaurants where they're placed in hot water until they take on a gelatinous consistency connoisseurs are known to pay over 50 bucks for a bowl of this hot viscous bird slobber conservationists worried that the value of these nests put the species at great risk especially when impatient harvesters snag nests that aren't yet empty sometimes tossing aside the bird eggs or even the baby birds and if you really want to talk about rare and valuable in his classic novel moby-dick Herman Melville wrote about our next example saying hein ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale he was talking about ambergris an ingredient found in traditional incenses perfumes and food flavorings so what is it well when a sperm whale has something sharp and irritating like a squid beak bouncing around in its digestive tract it'll cover it with a greasy internal secretion to help expel the object long thought of as whale vomit researchers now believe the stuff comes out the other end then that nasty little packet Bob's along in the oceans for months or years hardening on its way to the shore and solidifying an exceptionally unique scent as you can imagine ambergris is rare and thus extremely valuable in 2012 a kid in the UK found a chunk on the beach and at over two point five kilograms it's estimated to be worth over $63,000 whale poop for the wind so who's willing to shell out that much for hardened waxy whale excrement French perfumers of course it's fragrance can vary from generally animal a too sweet too musky but it turns out ambergris is also quite good at fixing a scent to human skin because sperm whales are a threatened species ambergris is now illegal in the US and Australia about high-end French fragrance houses still use it though only the most expensive perfumes contain whale poop so you won't find it in any French equivalent of Axe body spray alright so we've covered the musk in the spit in the poop let's look now at insect secretions you probably know what shellac is it's used to varnish stain and waterproof wood and other stuff but did you know that it is secreted by the little red Lac bug found in Thailand India in Southeast Asia Lac bugs are members of the coxa de family also known as scale insects when females insert their proboscis 'iz into a tree to suck at SAP they immediately begin extruding a sticky amber colored goo the color of the goo depends on what kind of tree they're sucking on so it comes in all kinds of earthy tones and shades because scale insects live in colonies and tend to stay on one tree their whole lives a tree may be covered in shellac harvesters scrape it from the trunks and clean filter and dry the resin into flakes which are dissolved in alcohol to make the shellac that you find at the hardware store creating a glossy Sheen finish shellac used to be a very popular would varnish but has now been mostly replaced by synthetic polyurethane historically it was used for painting and finishing various wood and paper products to coach sheets of Braille and until vinyl was invented gramophone records were made of pressed shellac today it is still used as varnish on fine string instruments and yes you've definitely eaten shellac too it's still used sometimes as a glazing agent coating certain hard candies like jelly beans on medical pills and sometimes as a preservative coating on citrus fruits on the cuter end of the animal spectrum humans have been living sheep for thousands of years behind dogs they're the oldest domesticated animals we use them for meat milk and wool and fur lanolin also called wool wax and wool grease lanolin is a yellowish waxy substance secreted through the sebaceous glands of wool bearing mammals it protects the animal's skin from the elements by waterproofing its wool and as much as 25% of a sheep's wool weight could be from lanolin when a sheep is sheared this greasy wax is separated from the wool with heat rollers and a centrifuge the lanolin itself is an excellent moisturiser for human skin and is used in all sorts of lip balms and lotions it's also used in various industrial lubricants and leather conditioners so clearly animals is out all sorts of useful things and over the millenia we've managed to find ways to extract and exploit them but there's also a growing field of research dedicated to creating synthetic alternatives to substances and structures found in nature biomimicry and here researchers are studying another strange animal secretion that they hope will help build a better sunscreen hippo sweats ever wonder why those bald beefy hippos don't get totally roasted in the hot African Sun all day they don't burn because it turns out their sweat is an amazing natural sunscreen researchers found that the reddish orange tinted UV absorbing glandular glaze that they secrete contains microscopic structures that scatter sunlight in fact hippo sweat may be more effective than any man-made sunscreen which reflects UVB rays but are less successful reflecting harmful UVA rays it even has distinct antiseptic qualities take that copper tone and while no one is suggesting slathering on hippo sweat researchers hope to replicate its effectiveness without turning anyone orange and now you know the next time you making yourself smell good for a hot date or enjoying a handful of jelly beans or varnishing your violin you'll probably have to thank one of our animal colleagues who sweat spit or pooped its mightiest to make that possible thank you for watching this episode of scishow if you have any questions comments or suggestions you can find us on Facebook Twitter or in the comments below and if you want to keep getting smarter with us here at scishow youtube.com/scishow and subscribe you

Channel: SciShow

Views: 789,801

Rating: 4.949894 out of 5

Keywords: scishow, science, animal, secretion, castoreum, beaver, perfume, musk, cigarette, additive, natural flavoring, civet, coffee, kopi luwack, ethics, animal welfare, swiftlet, bird's nest soup, ambergris, sperm whale, scent, cologne, spit, shellac, insect, lac bug, varnish, gramophone record, sheep, lanolin, wool wax, synthetic, biomimicry, hippo sweat, sunscreen, alternative

Id: xwOYW3apnlA

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2013