There is a more expensive poop in the world than cat coffee, that is, the poop of sperm whales. But not all of the whale's poop is worth a lot, but one of the excrement called ambergris. This ambergris, from ancient times to the present, from the royal family to the commoners are eager to have it, what is going on?
In 2012, a young boy in England was playing by the sea, when suddenly, he picked up a white stone and showed it to his father, who was overjoyed to see it. This stone weighs only 1 kilogram and is worth $60,000, or about 410,000 yuan.
Coincidentally, in 2016, three fishermen in Oman found a huge "stone" floating on the surface of the sea. The stone weighs 80 kilograms and is estimated at $3 million, or 20.61 million yuan.
The stone they picked up was ambergris. In ancient legends, ambergris was formed by the saliva of the dragon in the sea, so it was called ambergris. Europeans called it gray amber, because its color was gray, and somewhat like amber on land, and used this name to distinguish the amber formed by resin.
This ambergris has been a rare natural treasure from ancient times to modern times. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor loved it even more because of its medicinal value. At that time, the Hubu ordered an extensive collection of this ambergris throughout the country, and Shang Shu Gao of the Hubu Department spent all his efforts to collect eight or two ambergris. Hubu Shangshu received a reward from the Jiajing Emperor by paying tribute to these eight or two dragons, giving him the official title of Prince Shaobao and giving him 760 taels of silver.
Because of the Jiajing Emperor's preference for ambergris, a pound of ambergris was enough to make a person rise to a higher rank and get rich, and the people set off a boom in searching for ambergris in the East South China Sea. At that time, the price of ambergris was 1200 two silver a pound, and 1200 two silver was equivalent to 7.5 pounds of gold, which also proved that ambergris was much more expensive than gold.
How is ambergris produced? Before truly discovering its secrets, there are many theories and legends. Some say that the dragon's saliva is formed, some say it comes from seals, some say it comes from some kind of bird, and there are eighteen theories before and after that, all of which want to prove the origin of ambergris.
However, the ambergris hunters of the ancient coast never revealed where they found ambergris in order to make a living, and even they themselves had no way of knowing how the ambergris came from. Many scholars want to discover the secrets, but to no avail.
It wasn't until a chance, when a European fisherman discovered a stone similar to ambergris from the body of a dead sperm whale, that the secret was uncovered.
Fresh ambergris is black in color, and after being washed by seawater and sedimentation over time, ambergris takes on light brown, gray and white hues depending on the time. Among them, the white ambergris is the most precious, usually representing that it has undergone hundreds of years of baptism, and it is also the best texture and the most mysterious and charming ambergris species.
European fishermen found black ambergris from the stomachs of sperm whales, sparking some biologists' interest in continuing to explore. Among them, a British biologist named Robert Clark, after 50 years of profound research, proposed the birth theory of ambergris, that is, the theory of fecal stones.
The fecal stone theory was later recognized as the theory explaining the origin of ambergris because it explained a key piece of evidence as to why ambergris was found in the squid beak.
In Clarke's theory of fecal stones, sperm whales, as giant whales in the ocean, eat an astonishing amount of food every day. It likes to eat octopus and squid, and can eat hundreds of pounds of squid at a time. Sperm whales have four stomachs, enough to digest hundreds of pounds of squid, but cannot digest one part of the squid, the squid beak, because the squid beak is a sharp mouth shell. A sperm whale can hold no less than 2,000 squid beaks in its stomach.
These squid beaks do not stay in the stomach of the sperm whale all the time, but every few days, they are spit out by the sperm whale. Among them, very few squid beaks are not spat out in time, they enter the intestines of sperm whales, and over time, these squid beaks form a ball of feces in the intestines.
This ball of squid beak feces may block the sperm whale's rectum, preventing other fluid feces from draining out. As a result, sperm whales use the rectum's ability to further squeeze the ball of feces, providing room for the fluid feces to flow out. The balls of squid beak dung become harder and harder under the constant squeezing, wrapped layer after layer, becoming a stone that cannot be discharged through the rectum, just like the stones grow in our human bodies.
This fecal ball stone of the sperm whale will stay with it for a lifetime until it dies naturally. A whale falls, everything lives, and the dung ball sneaks out of the sperm whale's body along with other objects, becoming a floating object at sea.
This is Robert Clarke's theory of manure stones. Clark thinks that if the fecal stone is a little larger, it may break through the rectum of the sperm whale.
In addition, the fecal stone flowing from the sperm whale is not equal to ambergris, but through a series of chemical reactions between the intestinal microorganisms and the fecal stone, a gray-black or yellow-brown substance is formed inside the fecal stone, which is the real ambergris.
Ambergris is polished by seawater and irradiated by the sun, and after a long period of oxidation, the color will become lighter and lighter, and the smell of feces has long since dissipated, and the fragrance will follow. Until after hundreds of years of drifting at sea, it turns into pure white ambergris. This pure white ambergris is usually rare in a hundred years, while some gray or brown ambergris will be picked up by some lucky people who are naturally chosen.
The reason why ambergris is valuable is because it has medicinal properties such as blood rejuvenation, and second, because it has a better incense gathering function than musk. The former was the reason why the Ming emperor loved it, and the latter allowed ambergris to be used as a perfumer for perfume. With the spice of ambergris, you can keep the aroma for many days without dissipating. Moreover, not every whale can produce ambergris, which is only 1% probability. This makes ambergris more precious because it is rare.
It is worth mentioning that some people are also amazed at the way it is eaten. King Charles II of Great Britain was particularly fond of eating ambergris with eggs. In the earliest ice cream making abroad, it was even mixed with ambergris, and some people also tasted the cocktails made of ambergris.
In short, the origin of ambergris is strange, the rarity of the birth of ambergris, ambergris exceeds the price of gold, making it a rare treasure in the world. It can be seen that the natural world is far more magical than we think.