You Look Lovely, but You Smell Awful!
Hair dye in a box for $10 is a modern invention. Years ago, changing your hair color was quite a process. A hairdresser slave in ancient Rome used these items in various combinations for their fickle masters’ tresses: rotten leeches, squid ink, pigeon droppings, bile, and human pee.
Just a Hint of Swine
How about a little bonbon post dinner on your trip to Madrid? Just steer clear of Mantecado de Artesania—along with wheat flour, sugar, and cinnamon, the special after-tapas treat serves up the delectable taste of...pork butter—a fat commonly used for desserts in the land of the sun. You planned to make a pig of yourself at dessert time, not consume one.
“a corpse is meat gone bad.
Well and what’s cheese?
Corpse of milk.”
—JAMES JOYCE
Loosen Your Zipper
Foie gras literally means “fat liver,” so it may come as no surprise that the delicacy made from goose or duck liver is created by unnaturally inflating the organ through overfeeding, a practice that began in ancient Egypt.
Sloppy Toppings
What’s your favorite pizza topping? If you’re like most Americans, it’s pepperoni. Or maybe bell peppers, mushrooms, or extra cheese. Well, the Japanese are rather unique when it comes to pizza, asking for pizza makers to slide a squid or eel on top.
Did You Know? There are some rather bizarre pizza toppings sliding down the throats of people even closer to home. Besides the usual pepperoni and extra cheese, here are some creative ideas from Recipe Pizza: “The World’s Favorite Pizza Recipe website”: avocado (wrong texture, in our opinion), alfalfa sprouts (too much work), walnuts (maybe on chocolate pizza!), lobster (this sounds messier than even we can imagine)...
Octopus Vulgaris
Television doctor Dr. Oz has a suggestion for viewers who want to cut back on their red meat intake: grilled octopus. Apparently, he grew up on the stuff. He says to boil it with some parsley, tomatoes, and wine then freeze until you’re ready to grill. Serve with a Dijon mustard vinaigrette. Let your guests guess what they’re eating. Then tell them where you got the recipe and that the eight-legged sucker has lots of vitamin B-12. (And the octopus does, too!)
Be an Expert! Disgust is a useful feeling to have—but it may have evolved as a way to keep us from getting sick. Think of the things you’re disgusted by: many of them could carry viruses or bacteria.
Score for Scorpion Lovers
Feeling squeamish about trying scorpion? We were, too, until we found out that the poison is removed from the scorpion’s stinger once it’s been cooked. Ohhhh! Why didn’t you tell us? We would have chowed down on the death stalker years ago. Beijing is full of all kinds of scorpion delights, but you even can get it closer to home. In Los Angeles, the restaurant Typhoon serves it fried on toast, fully intact (except the poison, of course).
Embryonic Delicacy
Your parents may be careful now to buy eggs with lots of qualifiers on the package: organic, vegetarian fed, cage-free chickens, and so on. But there’s one thing that all the eggs we buy and eat have in common—they are unfertilized. The chicken laid them, but before the rooster had a chance to come along and do his part, they were whisked away to our supermarket shelves.
Okay, now that we’ve got that straight cut, let’s cut to a dish called balut, a favorite repast in the Philippines. These eggs have been fertilized! They’re allowed to grow for over a week just as nice as can be until they’re boiled alive and served up fetal style. They’re dead by the time they reach your plate, thankfully (unlike these unfortunate fellows, Nosedive,). Inside the eggshell you’ll find the tiny duck fetus, alongside the yolk. Even if you don’t make it to the Philippines anytime soon, you can give it a try at a restaurant in New York City called Maharlika Filipino Moderno.
Did You Know? Eating raw fish such as salmon can transfer parasites to the consumer that will grow into tapeworms longer than the consumer. Supermarkets are becoming savvier to the process of using tweezers to pick parasites off fish before stocking the shelves. The FDA recommends freezing fish before consuming it raw.
Hungry-Man Dinner
A man once swallowed 53 toothbrushes, two razors—and that wasn’t all. The doctors also found 157 other inedible objects in this man’s stomach at a single time. On the plus side, he was clean-shaven and didn’t have any cavities! Guess picky eaters should stop complaining about being forced to eat a piece or two of broccoli.
Nosedive
Eating raw fish is so last century. But what about eating raw fish that are still alive? People do it. In some countries, it’s considered a special treat. Most live fish going down the hatch are small enough to swallow whole, but the Chinese serve a rather large fish that survives being deep fried in the kitchen and making its way all the way to your plate, where it greets you still alive and breathing. Talk about a lively meal. As the French say, Bon appétit! Or perhaps the Jewish toast is more fitting: La Chaim! (Meaning, to life!)
Feline Dreams
In 2007, surgeons found a ten-pound hairball inside the stomach of a teenager—yet another reason not to groom your cat with your tongue.
IN THE KNOW
Pica: a disorder in which the sufferer has a craving for things that are inedible. Some specific examples:
• Xylophagia—eating wooden toothpicks
• Geophagia—eating clay or dirt
• Amylophagia—eating laundry starch and paste
Say Cheese!
On the island of Sardinia, there’s a kind of pecorino cheese that is purposely left out to rot until it is covered in maggots. It’s intentionally eaten that way, with live maggots jumping in every direction! Formaggio Marcio is now illegal but still popular on the underground market. We wonder if the word sardonic—a kind of dark sarcasm—has any connection to this maggot-filled cheese.
Slippery Devils
A woman in Fairfield, Connecticut had a surprising discovery when she went to cook seven eels for the Night of the Seven Fishes celebration. One was still alive and looking back at her, perhaps praying desperately for a Night of Six instead.
Mold—the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Eat your fruit, but not if it’s squishier than a pile of maggots (unless you’re on the island of Sardinia, Say Cheese!) and starting to grow a gray fungus called mold. Is mold ever okay to eat? The answer is yes. Moldy cheeses, like Gorgonzola, are considered by many to be a culinary treat. The bacteria that is injected into the cheese to create the bluish moldy veins is also the bacteria found on smelly feet.
Is that Blood in My Pudding?
Is blood pudding as medieval as it sounds? That depends. First of all, it’s more of a sausage than what we think of as pudding. According to the BBC, blood pudding is pigs’ blood mixed with onions, oatmeal, barley, flour, pork fat, and various herbs and it’s quite a popular breakfast item in the land of fish and chips. There is actually even a veggie version available made by Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company. It’s called V Pud, and the creators took special pains to “simulate the properties of blood”.
Did You Know? Moldy cheese has its own official day: October 9.
Putting the “ew” in Zoology! You don’t have to look any farther than Animal Planet to see some of the yuckiest stuff around.
Banana Slugs
These slimy suckers can grow up to nearly a foot long, but true to their name, they don’t make tracks very quickly, so you’d have no trouble peeling away from them. Their most distasteful feature is the mucus that oozes out of them for protection. Just make sure you don’t mistake them for their edible namesakes: one lick of this mollusk’s underbelly and your tongue will go numb.
Giant Squid
It sounds squishy, and it is. This mysterious sea creature is mostly muscle and an invertebrate, meaning that it has no hard skeleton. Despite its impressive size (the heaviest nearly breaks the scales at 2,000 pounds), it floats easily because of the ammonia in its muscle, which is
lighter than water. These slimy suckers have plenty of everything: eight arms, three hearts, two tentacles—both much longer than their body, the largest eyes in the animal world, and up to 300 suckers to grab onto prey. If you could get up close, you’d see that each sucker is lined with loads of tiny teeth, close to 50 on each one. All together, you’re talking about 15,000 choppers.
Tattle-Tail
People always want to know which is the biggest animal… so naturally, being a Gross-o-pedia reader, you will want to know which animal is responsible for the biggest poop. And maybe even how big the poop itself is. Well, the blue whale takes first prize for biggest animal. Are they also number one for number two? That’s hard to say. They usually have the runs, which makes the output rather difficult to measure. Still, we can assure you that whale’s tail leaves one giant whale trail.
Crooked Shark Poop
If sharks aren’t creepy enough, with their ability to smell a single drop of blood in 25 gallons of water, they also poop in an unusual way—it comes out in a spiral! Scientists who study fossilized poop found spiral coprolite and identified it as coming from a shark because their intestines have a matching shape.
IN THE KNOW
Coprolite—fossilized poop
I Want to Suck Your Blood… Using an Anticoagulating Agent
How do vampire bats get their victims to spill their blood? Well, they have an anticoagulating agent in their saliva, which prevents the blood from clotting.
Unpopular Scavengers
Why do vultures get such a bad rap for preying on wounded animals or on those who have already been partially eaten? It seems like a gentler method of survival than attacking a perfectly healthy animal in the prime of its life. Maybe it’s the way that they creep up on victims or peck at their eyeballs. And, of course, they do pee on themselves to cool off and regurgitate food into the mouths of their young, so, on second thought, the ostracized vultures fit squarely in the confines of a book on gross stuff!
Be an Expert! Vultures have bald heads so that they don’t collect blood and bits of dead flesh in their feathers after they poke around inside a carcass.
This Means War
The Portuguese man-of-war looks like a jellyfish, but it’s actually a colony of invertebrates all clumped together. The tentacles can extend down to as much as 165 feet underwater. If that’s not scary enough, washed-up dead men-of-war have still been known to sting people!
One-Stop Shopping
The chicken is an efficient little animal. Its underside has only one hole, and all these things come out of it: eggs, poop, and pee. (Sperm travels through the same shoot—opposite direction.) Here’s hoping there aren’t any traffic jams!
IN THE KNOW
Zoophobia: this one’s easy to remember, as it means fear of animals. We’re all scared of tigers or snakes that might kill us, and that’s a good thing. A zoophobic is the friend whose heart starts pounding when your mini poodle wakes up from his nap.
Squirmy Worms
Pinworms grow in your intestines and are very contagious. Can you guess which part of your body they come out of? Think for a minute. The intestines lead to…your butt—which means that the worms may show up in your underwear or in the toilet if you get infected. They are little white stringlike fellows less than half an inch long. The females go to work while you are asleep, planting thousands of eggs around your butt skin. You’ll start to itch, but it’s best not to scratch. There are effective medications, but it can take quite a while to completely wipe out an infestation. Washing your hands is the best prevention.
Trippy Fish
When snorkeling off the coast of Florida, don’t be drawn in by a piranha’s beguiling smile. These river beasts can easily rip off skin with their teeth. Its African relative, the Goliath tigerfish, has even been known to eat crocodiles.
IN THE KNOW
Herpetophobia: fear of reptiles, especially lizards and snakes
Lots of Snot
As gross animals go, giraffes don’t even rank, except for their 18-inch tongues, which work double duty by chewing leaves and giving their nostrils a clean sweep. Ever heard of touching your tongue with your nose? These guys keep riding right on inside and then stay awhile.
Two Heads Are Better than One
On various occasions, unusual snakes, calves, and turtles have all appeared with two heads on one body. There was once even a calf born with eight legs and two tails, although it did at least have the decency to limit his head count to one. On the other hand, the two-headed blind Brazilian snake has only one cranium, along with a misleading tail that also resembles one. Turns out the reptile’s not blind, either; however it can move in either direction—heads or tails.
Did You Know? The famed horny toad, celebrated outdoor pet of many a Texas child, is really a lizard. But that’s not the exciting part. These lizards can squirt blood from their eyes!
Porta-Umbrella
Shower much? An alligator in British Guiana once grew a tree on its back. At least he didn’t have to look for a shady spot to rest.
Did You Know? In the United Kingdom, skunks are occasionally domesticated (kept as house pets). Since 2006, taking out their scent glands is against the law, so think twice before bringing one home and letting him sleep in your bed. These gentle creatures, who eat seeds, berries, fruit, and insects, will issue a warning before spraying in self-defense, however. So if you see a raised tail, run the other way.
Smell You Later
We’ve all seen it happen. We may look away and pretend we don’t notice, just like we do when our math teacher has his fly down. But still, we have to ask the question: Why do dogs smell each other’s privates upon initial greeting? As Psychology Today points out, given that dogs can sniff out cocaine and dead bodies, “Why would a dog need to stick his nose directly into another dog’s snout, genitals, and nether regions to garner social information? Couldn’t he do that at a ‘safer’ distance?” The answer to this is inconclusive, as dog experts don’t agree on this rather boorish behavior. Some say a face-to-face greeting can be seen as confrontational, while others say canines collect more information from going where no man dares to go.
Did You Know? Dogs are champion smellers. Compared to the measly five percent of your brain devoted to figuring out that you stepped in something other than mud, at least a third of a dog’s brain is dedicated to olfactory stuff.
IN THE KNOW
Olfactory: it sounds like something you’d find in an abandoned mill town, but olfactory actually means having to do with your sense of smell, from the Latin olfacere (to smell).
Bite-Size Reptile
A rattlesnake was no match for Rodney Fluery, who, in 1971, killed one by biting it.
Prehistoric Horror
The 2007 discovery of a fossilized giant scorpion claw has led scientists to believe that spiders and other objects of our disgust had been even bigger than previously believed. As Dr. Simon Braddy from the University of Bristol put it, “This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realized, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were. We think the claws on this creature would have been powerful enough to rip someone to shreds.”
Glow in the Dark
Scorpions can glow in the dark. If you have an ultraviolet light, you’ll be able to see them. They’re also poisonous, though—so stand at a good distance. We’d rather stand as far as possible away—maybe even light years away—by gazing safely at the Scorpio constellation in the night sky. (If you’re more adventurous, maybe you’d like to taste one. See Score for Scorpion Lovers)
Sea Cucumber
Such a harmless name, and some people do eat them, but it’s what they eat that’s rather disturbing: a mixture of dead animal matter and feces. They’re also called sea slugs—even less appealing, isn’t it?
Dining in
A hagfish eats its pr
ey from the inside out (by slipping inside through the prey’s mouth or any other opening that’s big enough). It also has a rather interesting way of protecting itself: it produces slime that chokes its predators.
The Big Gulp
Have you ever used the term “big mouth” for a friend who can’t keep secrets? Well, he or she probably has nothing on the gulper eel—his entire head is basically one huge chomper.
Did You Know? Hippos fling around their own poop and pee with their tails, to mark their territories and show others who is boss. Couldn’t they just get one of those corny mugs with the words “World’s Greatest Boss”?
Ocean Whopper
In the Bible, Jonah spends three days inside the belly of a whale. Finally God ordered the whale to upchuck the prophet. If it had been a blue whale, Jonah could have fit neatly inside a blood vessel. A blue whale’s blood vessels are wider than your entire body!
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