• @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      506 days ago

      In his 1953 autobiography, Danish explorer Peter Freuchen claimed that in 1926, he became trapped in a blizzard while running a dog team and was forced to take shelter under his sled for 30 hours while snow built up and froze around him. When he tried to emerge, he found he was entombed in ice and unable to break free with his hands alone. Thinking quickly, he took a shit right there, shaped the turd into a chisel, and allowed it to freeze solid. He then claims he was able to use his newly made tool to chip his way free and make it back to camp. Peter was the only witness to his supposed escape. The study mentions it’s based on an Inuit ethnographic account, however. Maybe Peter, having spent much time in the Arctic with Inuit peoples simply took the story for himself. With the runners of the study finding that they were unable to replicate such a technique, it lends credibility to the claim that story may have been fabricated.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        316 days ago

        With the runners of the study finding that they were unable to replicate such a technique, it lends credibility to the claim that story may have been fabricated.

        ah, but did they eat what he ate beforehand?

  • circuitfarmer
    link
    fedilink
    English
    546 days ago

    In conclusion, the results support the hypothesis that fecal knives are usually shitty knives

    – the paper, probably

    • @where_am_i
      link
      English
      105 days ago

      Years go by but the internet legend lives on.

      Dunno about that science article, but I bought a poop knife a while ago and it works great!

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    205 days ago

    I have accidentally picked up a dried cat turd when younger, thinking it was rock. It was a bit fragile, easily break into dust. I realized it because it was not as heavy as an actual rock of the same size.

    Based on that, my unscientific conclusion is that even if it’s frozen, it’ll be hard to shape and easily breaks because it behaves more like dust/sand instead of cream.

  • 10_0
    link
    fedilink
    English
    105 days ago

    Funny how you just know this will come up as a defense in a trial somewhere somehow

  • AernaLingus [any]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    19
    edit-2
    6 days ago

    Davis states that the original source of the tale was Olayuk Narqitarvik. It was allegedly Olayuk’s grandfather in the 1950s who refused to go to the settlements and thus fashioned a knife from his own feces to facilitate his escape by skinning and disarticulating a dog. Davis has admitted that the story could be “apocryphal”, and that initially he thought the Inuit who told him this story was “pulling his leg”.

    That’s a long payoff for a practical joke, but totally worth it.

    Also, unsurprisingly, they won the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize in Materials Science (lol) for this one (video of the ceremony, Ig Nobel “lecture” from the lead author (also the primary pooper))

    • @[email protected]OPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      106 days ago

      I don’t think that this is the type of project you can go in “half-assed.” You need both cheeks for this.

    • veroxii
      link
      fedilink
      English
      56 days ago

      Might as well get paid grant money for poop time.