this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
463 points (97.5% liked)

Today I Learned

17858 readers
28 users here now

What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



Partnered Communities

You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

Community Moderation

For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A healthy human liver contains 575 international units (IU) of vitamin A per gram while a polar bear's liver contains between 24,000 and 35,000 IU per gram. Compare that to the tolerable upper level of vitamin A intake for a healthy adult human: 10,000. Signs of toxicity generally occur when approximately 25,000 to 33,000 IU are consumed.

Illness severity depended on how much liver the explorers consumed, but symptoms typically included drowsiness, sluggishness, irritability, severe headache, bone pain, blurred vision and vomiting. While milder cases merely involved flaking around the mouth, some accounts reported cases of full-body skin loss. Even the thick skin on the bottoms of a patient's feet could peel away, leaving the underlying flesh bloody and exposed. The worst cases ended in liver damage, hemorrhage, coma and death.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] NABDad@lemmy.world 247 points 10 months ago

Luckily, if you try to eat a polar bear liver, the polar bear will stop you.

But don't worry, human liver is safe for polar bears to consume.

[–] XEAL@lemm.ee 102 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Vitamin AHHHHHHH MY SKIIINNNN

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Vitamin ayyye 👉😎👉

[–] ElJefe@lemm.ee 8 points 10 months ago

Vitamin eh 🇨🇦

[–] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

👉💀👉

[–] funkajunk@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago
[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 76 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (17 children)

Am I the only one seeing the opportunity regarding billionaires? Of course we have to use a polar bear who is already dead so we don't have to kill the poor thing to get rid of billionaires. We can start by leaking the rumors that when a polar bear dies due to old age its liver releases certain enzymes that make it extremely delicious. Also eating a spoon of that liver each day for a week has been shown to elongate telomeres and greatly reduce, even revert, aging.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 51 points 10 months ago

...greatly reduce, even revert, aging.

There's a case to be made that it does stop its consumer from aging much further if applied correctly.

[–] derpgon@programming.dev 31 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I'd sacrifice a polar bear to get rid of a billionaire, ngl.

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

That's an interesting statistical question, too. Are there more polar bears still alive than billionaires?

[–] ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Sure, tons of them in zoos. Well more than billionaires.

Tho I’d like to see them in zoos instead. Rare animal and all. Worth gawking at the way people back in the day would gawk at the strange “savages” from distant lands..

[–] Colour_me_triggered@lemm.ee 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'd pay to see Elon musk jumping up and down in a zoo enclosure, throwing his shit at the visitors.

[–] Random_German_Name@feddit.de 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You would pay to see Musks Tweets?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

By an order of magnitude.

WWF estimates around 26,000 polar bears remaining (22,000-30,000). And there are 2640 billionaires globally according to Forbes.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The way things are going they won't be around much longer anyhow.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

"Sacrificing a whole other species is a chance I'm willing to take"

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If we don't get rid of rich people many more species are going to be sacrificed.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Ejh3k@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago

Stops the ageing process immediately!

[–] Twinklebreeze@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

Do you even need to involve an actual liver? We could just start a rumor and then skin some billionaires the old fashioned way.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 11 points 10 months ago

You don't even need to make all the marketing bullshit, just slap a US$ 5k price per serving and the rich will flock to it

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

Would be amazingly ironic too... To be killed by eating the flesh of a species that they played no insignificant part in making endangered.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] bob_lemon@feddit.de 55 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The reason that polar bear liver has toxic levels of vitamin A is that seal liver does and polar bears eat those.

So don't eat seal liver either.

[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But I want super gout to demonstrate my wealth!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=sGRZ29YZl68

(Pipeo bot help me out here)

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 4 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/watch?v=sGRZ29YZl68

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] jak@sopuli.xyz 47 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Theat found the bone-hurting juice. It’s a polar bear liver milkshake

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Sounds more like skin hurting juice.

What vitamin overdose would cause bones to fall off? 🤔

[–] cali_ash@lemmy.wtf 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

but symptoms typically included [...], bone pain, [...]

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 6 points 10 months ago

My only regret.

[–] betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

It's just a matter of perspective. Vitamin A overdose causes your skeleton, muscles and (generally speaking) internal organs to be ejected from your skin sack.

[–] thefluffiest@feddit.nl 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That problem is easily solved. Don’t eat polar bear

[–] Omgarm@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (3 children)

HelloFresh just delivered one for this week :(

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's just a spray-painted sun bear.

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How many people are trying to eat polar bear liver?

[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Very few actually! Apparently some Dutch explorers back in the 1500s trying to sail over the top of the globe got stuck in ice and ended up killing and eating a polar bear and documented their illnesses

We didn't figure out what happened to them until the 1940s

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm more surprised with how they managed to kill a polar bear. Those things are ferocious.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] wjrii@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Tolerable upper intake" is based on more than a single does. One gram would almost certainly be fine. There's some slightly sketchy 1940s "fuck them lab-rats" science going on, but some scientists at Cambridge guesstimated it would take making it into a significant side-dish or main course to REALLY fuck you up:

It is questionable what factor should be taken to convert doses used for rats to the corresponding doses for man, but the ratio of 75 taken from the relative food intakes of the 100 g. rat and 70 kg. man would seem reasonable. If we take 100,000 i.u. of vitamin A as sufficient to cause immediate illness in the rat, then about 7,500,000 units should cause illness in man. This amount would be present in 375 g. of bear liver containing 20,000 i.u. of vitamin A/g., not an excessive portion to be eaten at a single meal.

[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 10 months ago

scientists at Cambridge guesstimated it would take making it into a significant side-dish or main course to REALLY fuck you up

I actually heard about this from a YouTube channel referencing the diary of Gerrit de Veer from 1597 where he recounted his expeditions' encounter with eating polar bear liver and nearly dying from it in 1596.

I can't find the actual diary entry, but I think it's behind a pay wall on the Wikipedia link as a reference.

The story the YouTuber told was presumably in the diary. He said their ship got stuck in ice and they used wood from the ship to make a cabin. Sometime later, they had a run-in with a polar bear and ended up shooting it from inside the cabin. Sometime after that, they had a group meal consuming the polar bear liver and everybody's skin started falling off.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrit_de_Veer

[–] kia@lemmy.ca 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)
[–] De_Narm@lemmy.world 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sure. Each gram means death and since death is a negative, they cancel each other out!

(Don't try it though.)

[–] Plopp@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is true. It's why you never see dead people with an even number of fatal bullet wounds.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Marsupial@quokk.au 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Shalt thou count to one no more no less

[–] Jerb322@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Five is right out...

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›