[HN Gopher] Dining like Darwin: When scientists swallow their su...
___________________________________________________________________
Dining like Darwin: When scientists swallow their subjects (2015)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 79 points
Date : 2023-08-28 17:13 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2021)
| debo_ wrote:
| Charles Darwin: The Original Kirby
| dontreact wrote:
| I'm left curious what the 20 pound rodent was. Capybara?
|
| "In Venezuela, capybara meat was so popular that sometime between
| the 16th and 18th centuries, clergymen petitioned to continue
| eating it during Lent. Although biology says otherwise, the
| Catholic Church agreed. They declared that the capybara was a
| "fish" and therefore acceptable to eat during Lent."
|
| Found this after a bit of googling
| mucle6 wrote:
| This fact brightened my day, thanks for sharing!
| shagie wrote:
| [dead]
| anon____ wrote:
| Rabbits are counted as birds in Japanese, possibly for a
| similar reason.
|
| https://archive.ph/AFP0F
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Not to spoil it too much, but this concept is part of the plot of
| the movie _The Pirates! Band of Misfits_ , a thoroughly silly and
| fun claymation movie with Charles Darwin as a main character
| (along many pirates and Queen Victoria). It's by Aardman
| Animation, which is famous for the Wallace & Gromit films.
| wgrover wrote:
| I had the same thought. BTW, the movie is titled "The Pirates!
| In an Adventure with Scientists!" in the UK (same as the book
| it's based on). The studio changed the title for Americans [1],
| perhaps assuming we'd be less interested in a movie with
| _scientists_ , shudder...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates!_In_an_Adventure_w...
| ftxbro wrote:
| > Although Darwin eventually did quite well in his final exams,
| most of his three years was spent eating exotic meats with his
| Glutton Club, drinking a bit too much, riding his horse, and of
| course collecting beetles.
|
| Imagine how much student debt he must have had when he graduated,
| and not even learned to code. smh. But he developed better taste
| than the common man, which shows that he deserved the better
| things that came to him in his life.
| supazek wrote:
| What are you even mad at?
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| To me it seems ftxbro is jesting at the fact that Darwin
| studied a "useless" subject rather than something practical
| and marketable, like modern liberal arts majors saddled with
| tons of debt.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| morkalork wrote:
| Lucky he didn't eat something like a polar bear liver
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Good thing he didn't discover any poisonous mushrooms.
| uwagar wrote:
| thank god he didnt discover the tiger or rhino.
| yelling_cat wrote:
| The Voyage of the Beagle is a fun read, with many little asides
| about what the animals Darwin ate tasted like. Puma meat was one
| he called out as particularly delicious and remarkably like veal.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's pretty amazing that meat is a substantial part of our diet
| yet most people probably only eat 3-10 different animals.
|
| Edit: I forgot about sea food. So I guess its higher for many,
| but some people dont eat much seafood. Regardless, I still think
| it's interesting that we eat a minuscule fraction of land
| animals.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think this is an obvious side effect of industrialization. We
| got really good at factory farming chickens/cows/pigs/etc. and
| catching/processing certain fish, like tuna, sardines, salmon,
| etc. so that's the cheapest meat to get to market and the
| cheapest to buy, so that's what we eat. There's room for
| regional variations, like more seafood is around the
| Mediterranean sea compared to the Midwest US.
|
| Then, most cookbooks call for these in recipes, so it becomes
| more in demand. This causes something of a cycle.
|
| There are foods I would eat more if it was more available, like
| salt cod was very common in an area I used to live (with a lot
| of Portuguese ex-pats), but where I live now, it's only common
| around Christmas (because demand from the Italian Americans I
| live near now rise around this time). My buddy hunted an elk a
| while back so I was flush with elk meat for a while and if it
| was available and economical, I'd buy elk steaks from time to
| time, just to change things up.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Maybe domestication more than industrialization. Were there
| other animal species that used to be more commonly grown by
| farmers that disappeared with industrialization?
| tfourb wrote:
| Not disappeared but lost significance: goats, Camel, horses
| (for meat), rabbits, eels, various poultry, and of course a
| 99% reduction of the commercially grown varieties of pigs,
| cows and chicken (now called ,,heritage breeds")
| wizofaus wrote:
| Goat meat is still eaten by 70% of the world's population
| apparently - and perhaps surprisingly Australia is the
| single largest exporter. But it's certainly a niche
| market compared to the big 3. Even lamb/mutton is only
| eaten at 1/6th the quantities of beef worldwide.
| scythe wrote:
| >salt cod was very common in an area I used to live
|
| Cod was much more common _period_ prior to 1992.
| jaipilot747 wrote:
| What happened in 1992?
| jhbadger wrote:
| The Atlantic northwest cod population collapsed in that
| year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlant
| ic_north...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Which was a great boost to lobster populations (Cod prey
| on lobster), we managed to over-fish those too though.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >I think this is an obvious side effect of industrialization.
| We got really good at factory farming chickens/cows/pigs/etc.
| and catching/processing certain fish, like tuna, sardines,
| salmon, etc. so that's the cheapest meat to get to market and
| the cheapest to buy, so that's what we eat.
|
| I think you're right, or at least it's a major reason.
|
| Before this article I have also observed that the only wild
| animals that people generally eat (at least in much of the
| developed world) is seafood. Most other meat, for most
| people, is farmed. Its not uncommon to eat fish that someone
| caught from the ocean, but it is uncommon to eat a bird that
| was shot out of the sky.
| rcarr wrote:
| Deer is pretty common because of hunting, especially in
| America and probably Scotland too. Any wild animal that is
| a problem is still eaten e.g kangaroo in Australia, boar in
| Hawaii.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Right. Likewise, there are many unusual materials we could
| make our houses out of, but for economic efficiency we mostly
| make them out of some combination of wood, stone, clay,
| steel, and chemical binders thereof.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| Well. Have you tasted possum or raccoon? They're pretty gamey.
| kagevf wrote:
| Just curious - have you tried rabbit, and would you consider
| it to also be gamey?
| dinkblam wrote:
| rabbit is very tasteless (not unlike chicken) while hare is
| quite "gamey"
| tech_ken wrote:
| As an aspirational, on/off vegetarian this always strikes me as
| extremely funny. People (particularly the "omg BACON" mega-
| carnivore types) get sooooo precious about certain types of
| meat being "gross" or "weird", and it often has a particularly
| racialized dimension (a lot of the COVID-19 stuff made this way
| worse, IMO). To me it's like, meat is meat; so long as there's
| no infectious organisms in it then it's really all the same
| stuff and I'm going to eat it. Anyone who gets too picky about
| what kind is acceptable to eat kind of needs to get over
| themselves (IMHO). Sure the texture and flavor changes, and I
| can respect people having some preference there, but if you're
| going to wimp out over eating sweetbreads or horse then at the
| very least you have to drop the "I eat MEAT, sorry if that
| ///OFFENDS/// you" schtick.
| thunkle wrote:
| And within the few animals we only certain parts of those
| animals
| contingencies wrote:
| That reminds me I have some kangaroo ("roo ragout") in the
| fridge.
| ardkf wrote:
| How did you obtain it? I've been wanting to try it ever since
| I missed the opportunity when on vacation in Australia as a
| kid. But it's been difficult to find in the American Midwest.
| contingencies wrote:
| Had a little shindig on the weekend and a friend brought it
| along. I don't usually buy much meat, but it's in
| reasonable distribution here in Australia. You can also buy
| emu and, I assume, crocodile. Once bought a farmed
| crocodile at a market in China with a Kiwi friend. They
| asked if we wanted it killed, we said yes, the next 15
| minutes were horrible... they had a hell of a time
| decapitating the thing with a cleaver then both the head
| and the body kept walking around moving for another full
| minute or so. Serious dinosaurs, like giant snake-chickens.
| The meat isn't that tasty, tastes kind of like chewy
| chicken, but it was a memorable.
| mihaic wrote:
| The same is actually true of plants. My grandparents ate many
| different aromatic plants, and even had many different grains
| they planted like buckwheat or millet.
| TRiG_Ireland wrote:
| There was actually a movement to find more animals to
| domesticate. J. Draper dives into some fascinating history of
| it, and also a discussion of how to read historical sources, in
| this video on the man who ate the heart of a king:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GmsP0zwAno.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. I've heard vegetarians call this idea complex
| "carnitarianism". If you suggest to most Americans that they
| eat dog or horse or elephant, they'll be horrified. But we're
| perfectly comfortable with eating animals designated as food.
|
| I live these contradictions myself. When I meet individual
| cows, I'm often charmed. Or my friend keeps chickens that I
| enjoy feeding when I'm over. I would have a hard time eating
| the animals I had met, but I had a burger for dinner last night
| without the slightest problem.
| xattt wrote:
| In the same way we, as a collective, ascribed value to
| certain rocks and metals, certain living things have been
| designated as edible.
|
| There is beauty to a freshly cleaved piece of anthracite
| (like your cow example), but an industrial pile of coal does
| not.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| My sister and I used to play with lobsters on my
| grandmother's sun-deck while we were waiting for the water to
| boil.
| boredemployee wrote:
| While what you said is funny and made me laugh, I completely
| relate.
| rayiner wrote:
| Bangladeshis often buy live cows to slaughter for Eid
| celebrations. My cousin posted a picture of a live cow
| chilling in their house, hanging out with their kids, etc. I
| remember riding one around our yard (which was in the middle
| of the city) and making friends with it.
|
| People who live closer to the slaughtering process have a
| more flexible view of the pet/food distinction.
| gnrlst wrote:
| That's because a burger has become its own "thing", far
| removed from the "Cow". Like a chicken breast has become a
| "thing". Also calling meat with a different name (beef vs cow
| meat, pork vs pig meat, poultry, venison, etc) further
| removes the animal from what's on your plate. It's like in
| software, you use an OO language but you don't often stop to
| thing what's happening behidn the scenes.
| googlryas wrote:
| Neither here nor there, but that "meat by a different name"
| is most likely due to class divides in England after the
| Norman conquest. The French(ish) speaking Normans were the
| upper class getting the finished product, so the language
| reflects that - beef(boeuf), pork(porc), and, a mostly
| forgotten one, but poulet for chicken. Whereas the
| farmers/lower classes - those dealing with the animals
| themselves, were speaking Old English with Germanic derived
| words - pig, cow, chicken.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Twenty years ago, I lived in San Jose's Almaden Valley, a
| block away from a dairy farm. On our walks around the
| neighborhood, we used to pick hay and feed it to the cows.
|
| One day, my daughter _named_ three of the cows: Treemore,
| Chicken Nose, and Looneycake.
|
| Chicken Nose had a pattern on her nose that looked like a
| chicken. I don't remember what the other two names meant.
|
| Around that same time, we went to a friend's barbecue. His
| dad was a butcher, and he cooked the thickest steak I've ever
| seen. It must have been two inches or more.
|
| "Cooked" may be overstating it. When he brought in the steak
| on a platter, it was all loose and jiggly, with blood
| dripping out of it.
|
| When I asked him about it, he said "That's not blood. It's
| juice!"
|
| I kind of lost my taste for beef after that. Pork too.
|
| But some exceptions apply. I don't enjoy a hamburger or a
| pork chop, but on occasion I would have a hot dog or a piece
| of crisp bacon.
|
| I guess if the meat is disguised enough I don't mind it as
| much?
| Bjartr wrote:
| To add detail for the curious:
|
| Blood is hemoglobin, and circulates the body, delivering
| oxygen to where its needed. Whereas the "juice" from a
| piece of cooked meat is myoglobin, stores oxygen inside
| muscle cells until needed, and is responsible for the red
| color of meat in general.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| He was right. One of the first steps of slaughtering is
| draining the blood. There isn't much left by the time it
| gets to the butcher. The red liquid you see after cooking
| red meat is myoglobin, which lives inside the muscle tissue
| itself as opposed to the vascular system. It also turns
| blood-red in the presence of oxygen.
| skc wrote:
| Yes, and in fact cultures that place fewer limits on what
| animals are edible are probably the sane ones (or at least
| logically consistent ones), and not the "weird" ones.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| You don't have to eat what you don't like. However, you could
| (un-)train yourself to like what you didn't like before.
|
| Over the lifetime our cognition, through conditioning,
| accumulates or eliminated emotional associations with things.
| E.g. the common person from our culture that didn't know they
| were eating a dog would have a visceral physiological
| response to the associated disgust their brain launches once
| they were told that in fact they ate the dog.
|
| And it's okay, these associations exist and people have
| initially little control over them.
|
| But people in cultures other than ours don't have this
| association conditioned, and for them it's perfectly fine to
| eat dog.
|
| This shows that this is just a thing in the head, not
| physiological. I used to be together with a farmer girl and
| she saw and raised a cow with her father from it's beginning
| until it's meat ended in her stomach as chewed through juicy
| steak.
|
| Who's "right" here? Nobody, it is what it is. Everything is
| possible.
| BagelGuy wrote:
| Cognitive Dissonance is a powerful force.
| jldugger wrote:
| Domestication is hard work, yall.
| wizofaus wrote:
| It is, but it's already been done for many animals that
| simply haven't had the levels of industrialisation of meat
| production applied to them as have beef/chicken/pork.
| h4l wrote:
| I wonder if this has anything do with how bad his health was?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Charles_Darwin
| bitwize wrote:
| The fact that he let a kissing bug bite him didn't help...
| [deleted]
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| It was an era of science where the easiest way to observe an
| animal up close in detail was to first shoot it with a gun. Makes
| you appreciate how far we've come with things like high speed
| cameras, batteries for record length, gps tracking and precision
| optics.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| The anecdote from the article about Darwin realizing, mid meal,
| that the bird the ship's cook had prepared for him actually had
| research value and running off to salvage parts from the
| kitchen is almost darkly hilarious - must have been crazy to be
| doing research at a time when someone serves up the thing
| you're looking for, not knowing anything about its significance
| or why you're there
| earthscienceman wrote:
| If you think that's a strictly historical phenomena you're
| underestimating how humanity operates. I done research
| cruises in the Arctic and there was multiple instances of the
| ships crew not realizing, understanding, or caring about the
| scientific mission. Instances like samples being naively
| destroyed because why would someone put tubes of ice in the
| overflow freezer, etc etc.
|
| Funny enough, I'm not too critical of it. I can't drive or
| operate a ship. Humanity is a bunch of disparate people
| trying to accomplish things together and sometimes it leads
| to very funny scenarios.
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://www.thefactsite.com/charles-
| darwin-eating-habits/ to something hopefully less spammy.
|
| Related and possibly of interest:
|
| https://beagleproject.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/having-dinner...
| wpietri wrote:
| It's been a long time since I read _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
| the Sea_ , but one of the things that struck me at the time was
| how concerned the narrator was with how everything tasted. It was
| released 10 years after _On the Origin of Species_ , so I imagine
| we had yet to develop a food supply stable and generous enough
| that most people would be happy to let all that good protein just
| keep wandering around in the wilderness. As the line goes, "If
| God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make
| them out of meat?"
| tough wrote:
| We're made of meat too tho...
| [deleted]
| supazek wrote:
| Speak for yourself
| tw04 wrote:
| And there's more than one culture that applied that rule to
| us.
| PakG1 wrote:
| And a number of pathological individuals within cultures
| that don't apply that rule to us.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| To paraphrase Flanders and Swan: "If God didn't mean for poor
| people to eat rich people, he wouldn't have made them of
| meat."
|
| Flanders and Swan: The Reluctant Cannibal:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjAHw2DEBgw
| fsckboy wrote:
| I guess a play on Jonathan Swift's 1729 _A Modest Proposal
| For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a
| Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them
| Beneficial to the Publick_
| miah_ wrote:
| Some people eat people. There was a guy who had a foot
| amputation and made it into taco's for his friends.
| rsapkf wrote:
| They're Made out of Meat: https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar
| /writing/prose/text/think...
| 2023throwawayy wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg&t=360s
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I wonder if eating something he shouldn't have contributed to his
| mystery illness later in life.
| mat_epice wrote:
| One theory with a lot of evidence behind it is that he was a
| combination of lactose intolerant and depressed.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1743237/pdf/v08...
| zingababba wrote:
| Was wondering the same thing.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_of_Charles_Darwin
| galuvian wrote:
| This lines up with how it took 300 years for the giant tortoise
| to receive a scientific name. The process to get this required
| delivering a specimen back to England, and they were just too
| delicious.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| QI had some great discussions on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPggB4MfPnk
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsoWLFbnFIk
| Symbiote wrote:
| Is it true? There are museum record of skeletons from the
| early 19th century, which is around the right time, and there
| are Latin names from around then too.
| dakr wrote:
| The encyclopedic CRC handbook used to (maybe still does?) list
| what different metals, minerals, and other materials taste like.
| It seems a lot of people felt taste was an important sense to
| make use of.
| rjsw wrote:
| My high school biology teacher did research on the slime on the
| skin of trout. He said that he didn't finish the PhD but ate well
| during it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Is this related at all to the history of eating whale meat?
| alexmolas wrote:
| Plot twist: he didn't travel the world to discover new species
| and advance science, but just to try new flavors and eat strange
| animals
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| He traveled on his stomach.
| gold7777 wrote:
| It could explain his poor health.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-08-28 23:01 UTC)