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The ocean: state of impending catastrophe
Humans: can we make another kind of cheese from them?
I wonder if there’s a hidden whale/dolphin society debating whether or not to invade humans right this very moment
If whales are smart enough to debate that, they probably have cultural memory of almost getting whaled to extinction. Which would make them like us less, but on the other hand, might make them afraid to get us too upset at them
Perhaps it’ll make your day better to know that Pacific nations have passed legislation recognising legal personhood for whales and dolphins, granting them rights against being hunted?
Honestly makes sense
Looking at a dolphins brain is enough to convince me they’ve known what’s up for far longer than we have
Although I will admit that’s an interesting little fact, I would have been perfectly fine not knowing it.
Unsubscribe from whale titty facts?
Well let’s not go crazy here.
Whaaaale, let’s not go crazy here.
No need to thank me. You’re whale cum.
So many questions. How does one go about milking a whale? How do you make cheese from milk with a thickness similar to No. 4 Fuel Oil? Who was the first person to attempt to milk a whale? Who is buying up all these whale dairy products? Is there such a thing as a whale milk cheesecake?
So I elected not to look into it, because I doubt that zoos are selling it. Which means it’s likely sourced from whalers
Japan, Iceland, Norway, are all actively fishing commercially (though Japan uses the cover of “scientific” expeditions to justify it.)
According to their process page the whales are guided into a harness and then milked. Whether or not we should believe it, I cannot say.
I wouldn’t believe it. The profile photos of their ‘team’ look AI generated.
Nothing is found when searching for their names. There’s not a thing out there about “Chief Scientist” Mark Linneaus, although he claims to have had an academic career. If he in fact “dedicated more than 20 years to investigating how diet and environment shape mammalian milk production”, it is surprising that his name is nowhere to be found on Google Scholar.
Not to get started on the pictures of their alleged cheeses. There’s red flags all over the website. At least they don’t accept orders, so it looks more like a joke than a scam.
It’s a shame though, I would love to try sustainably produced whale cheese.
The street address doesn’t exist. April fools
Must be an April Fools prank.
215 Juniper St. Pismo Beach CA doesn’t exist.
Well the reviews are from the Oculus marketing lead, a, Simian Field Reseacher (sic) and an independent shoe salesman. Two of them even have the same picture. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this isn’t real.
Plus they’re touting it as the new sustainable future of dairy. That alone is an insane thing to claim. There are fewer than thirty thousand gray whales in the world. They produce eighty gallons of milk a day. That’s about twelve cows worth if you ignore that most of it is going to be drunk by the whale’s calf.
Yup.
I’m thinking it either flopped or was never a thing.
I doubt it’s something that could be reliably commercialized.
Plus cow dairy requires constant breeding in order to keep the cows milk supply up. Just like humans, they only produce milk after giving birth and for a limited time.
Breeding cows in captivity is pretty standard fare these days.
I’m not sure whale breeding is an industry that currently exists. Nor is whale sperm harvester. As if milking a female whale is complicated enough.
But why is this any more disgusting than cow milk cheese or goat milk cheese?
Well.
I hate to break it to you… but the whales probably aren’t milked more than once.
My guess is it’s sold by whalers.
They talk about their process. It involves a whale harness, and divers to do the milking of wild whales.
I’m honestly still wondering if this is an elaborate joke 😆
Edit: from their FAQ:
Is this a joke? No, this isn’t a joke, and we’re here to stay.
Further down the page:
Treating whales ethically and with respect is our #1 priority. All whales participate on a strictly voluntary basis
I’m still not convinced it’s real…
That’d be my bet. I’d bet they aren’t even “milked”. The probably just take it out of the body manually. I assume whales probably carry a lot of milk though, so if someone is killing whales I guess it’s good it’s being used for something… although that gives more profit to the whalers so maybe not.
According to their process page the whales are guided into a harness and then milked. Whether or not we should believe it, I cannot say.
The pics of the team seem a bit AI to me, also when googling their names there are no clear links connecting those names to whale dairy besides that website. This (and how unrealistic the process sounds) leads me to believe that this is not real.
they look like stock photos. the address at the bottom (Pismo beach CA) seems real enough. (at least the address comes back to deep sea.)
Dunno if the process is real. It seems… not likely to produce a whole lot of cheese, really. I’m a little curious as to the actual prices, though. If it’s like… insane-per-pound… maybe there is enough interest in it. But given how many whales get taken to commercial fishing; I imagine there’s likely to be some on the market.
The address doesn’t exist. Juniper street doesn’t go up to 215
What do you think happens to dairy cows after their milk production declines? Or their male calves?
aaand they’re sold out
That earthly address does not exist. Pismo Beach is just that, a beach. (You can successfully dig for clams there, or you could when I was a kid.) And there’s no street by that name anywhere in the vicinity. Looks like an elaborate April Fools joke.
100% that someone has tasted/drunk/chewed whale milk. In fact I don’t think there would be many species that haven’t been milk tasted by a human at this point
humans are some curious little fucks
You spelt disgusting wrong
I’d drink whale milk without hesitation. It’s probably fishy, though.
Whales are mammals, so it probably tastes humany.
There are milk dogs at least in Vietnam right now.
Also cat milk and … rat milk
Rat milk, I guarantee you no one has ever tasted that.
Edit: Welp, my day is ruined. People are weirder than I’ve ever imagined.
You’d be totally wrong.
It’s a bit thin and watery, and the taste isn’t very strong. But it is slightly sweet.
Source: used to breed pet rats, and mama rats leak sometimes. No reason to not taste it when that happens.
Wasn’t yummy, but it wasn’t bad either.
And, yes, I’m certain it was milk and not urine.
Hell, our neighborhood had a cat back when I was a kid. Not a stray, but not anyone’s cat either. She was super sweet, loved kids, but did not love being in houses. But she did love our back porch for birthing. And she was perfectly fine with any of us handling the kittens, and loved belly rubs while producing milk. So, it was inevitable to end up tasting it if you were an adventurous kid that knew where the milk in the fridge came from because you’d milked cows before.
Most milk tastes roughly the same tbh. We’ve bred cows and some goats to where they’re different, but the taste varies more by diet than animal. Mind you, I haven’t gone around sampling everything, but I don’t have an artificial mental block about tasting it either, and I’ve been around a lot of livestock and pets that were lactating over the years.
Fat content is the real, major factor after diet.
Carnivores, or omnivores that eat a lot of meat, tend to be a little “gamy” compared to herbivores. Goats are an exception, but the ones I’ve had “from the tap” so to speak, were bred for milk, so weren’t as gamy as it can get.
Horse milk is pretty funky. Not bad, but I wouldn’t pour a glass either.
Trying to think of anything that stood out from the herd, so to speak, but nothing comes to mind beyond that.
This guy is a conneseur.
Have you ever met the kind of people that keep rats as pets? I’m gonna guess that at least 1% of them have tasted rat milk.
Yup
There have been studies on rat milk, which itself suggests that someone has developed a process to extract it. I think if you spend sufficient time thinking about how to extract milk from rats, and you have no interest in drinking it, it’d be weirder than the alternative.
How TF does a baby whale nurse then? The momma whale is essentially pooping lard out of her nipple? That’s a visual I didn’t expect today.
? it just drinks it? like sure its thick but it still flows
The analogy of toothpaste was used but yoghurt in a poch might be a better analogy.
Imagine dairy flavored toothpaste
Why imagine when you can live it? (Just don’t tell them it isn’t for your cat when ordering)
The whale milk must flow.
High pressure washer style
I know this one! Baby latches on and Mama pumps a big gulp of milk, baby swallows one, done! So baby doesn’t have to hold it’s breath too long.
The address is the ad doesn’t exist, though. Which is good because there’s no way anyone could ethically harvest whale milk.
? it just drinks it? like sure its thick but it still flows
So maybe more like a milkshake? Her milkshake brings all the calves to the yard?
Warm milkshake
Plus side for squick thoughts, probably not that warm. The ocean is quite cold and things lose heat 25 times faster in water than air, so it would likely cool down considerably between being…… extruded…? And consumed.
Then again, I don’t know a whales body temp to start with, so there might be a lot of heat to lose. Idk if that’s better or worse…
Good point!!
Apparently whales are ~36°, about the same as humans. I’m not a biologist or anything, but I wonder why they maintain such a high body temperature, considering how difficult that is in the ocean lol.
Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the milk is quite a bit colder by the time it gets to the baby.
Here’s, uh… definitely the strangest youtube video I’ve watched this week, but I thought it was interesting. ¯\(ツ)/¯
So I’m not a biologist either but I’m going to speculate on the temp thing. (Somewhat educated speculation - science of all varieties is my jam)
Basically my hypothesis is that between insulation and size, they aren’t capable of losing heat fast enough to fall below their baseline temp, but any old temp would probably have worked fine, as long as their fats stay liquid (and for all I know that’s 36C, but that seems highly unlikely - you’d want to be several degrees warmer in case of emergency, else you’d get stiff and die for sure).
They have a nice layer of fat for insulation and that’s all well and good, but they are massively huge and a lot more spherical than most animals. So, they have a small surface area to volume ratio, and lose heat slower as a result. And because they are huge, and muscle twitch is heat generating (to say nothing of leaky heat-producing brown fat, idk if they have this, but most mammals seem to for thermoregulation), they likely produce a gob of heat internally just existing. Much like we believe the larger dinosaurs were endothermic due to sheer size (and some evidence from their bone structure).
Side note - Imagine how many calories it would take to maintain basal metabolic rate when you are losing that heat to 4C water at literally all times. It takes us about 1500-2000 calories for this function and we only lose heat to air that’s relatively close to our body temp.
I did a super quick scan of melting points of various fats, and while without knowing exact compositions of whale blubber idk the melting point, a surprising amount of the animal fats we use for cooking melt around 25-40C, with most large terrestrial animals (cow, pig, deer, etc.) falling between 32-40C (goose fat was the 25C).
If their composition hadn’t worked, though, they could have evolved a polyunsaturated fat (like fish oil) with a lower melting point.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk ;)
Must consume the forbidden icing
I’ve never had whale milk but I am willing to give it a whirl. who’s with me
Fuck Yeah! Put that on the bucket list! I want to suck whale milk straight from the teat! Feed me big mama!
that would bring a new meaning to “full
creamfat” ice cream… (editted a word)That must make some ultra indulgent ice cream
More like icecheese
so making cheese from whale milk would be like SUPER cheese.
Would this be the freshest cheese possible? Considering that cheese is traditionally not fresh in the slightest.
cheese is traditionally not fresh in the slightest.
Oh, but it can be. Farmer’s cheese and other fresh milk cheese types curdle the milk proteins using an acid reaction to citrus or vinegar rather than fermentation.
Fresh cheese is typically called curd. Curd needs to be compressed and aged to make actual cheese.
You didn’t answer the question though…
If I found a block of cheddar in my fridge with the consistency of toothpaste I’d throw it out, so I have no clue what this guy’s deal is.
Cheddar isn’t the only kind of cheese…
Go on… 🤔
Many (most? I’m not sure) cheese are not hard cheeses. A lot of delicious cheeses can be very creamy (sometimes in a shell that’s more solid).
Sounds like you are missin the point on purpose
I’m addressing the final statement that “[Whale Milk] is basically cheese.”
Apologies, that comment was made as I was falling asleep and this one is being made during a period of half-wakedulness that I hope to prove temporary.
Do… do you think all cheese has the same consistency of cheddar? Cottage cheese exists, as do many other soft cheeses. Also, he mentioned fat consistency. Fat under cooler temps gets harder, so in your fridge it probably would be more hard, closer to maybe cream cheese or something like that.
Alright, I’m awake now and can more thoroughly explain what I meant.
The original post had a sentence that suggested there was no point in making whale cheese, because the consistency is very similar. However, there are many kinds of cheese that are dissimilar in texture and consistency, mainly hard cheeses like cheddar, largely regarded as the most popular cheese in the world. Thus, even if you ignore the other factors, there would be a vast difference between some kinds of cheeses one may emulate with whale’s milk and the milk itself.
And our point is most popular does not mean only. Do you throw out all other cheese because it isn’t cheddar? I mean, you may, and that’s your choice, but I have at least 4-5 different cheeses in my fridge, and not all of them are hard. Throwing it out because it’s not exactly the same as another well known type doesn’t make it not cheese.
A better argument would be it doesn’t fit the definition of cheese because it isn’t curdled. It might have a consistency similar to curdled milk, but if it hasn’t actually gone through the process iirc it doesn’t follow the definition.
Though I guess at this point we’re just getting pedantic, and no one really wants to read that.
most popular does not mean only
Please re-read my comment.
Rule 34 anyone?
Whale smegma?
I dont know about that. This sounds like some pro-whale propaganda to me.
I read that some countries still hunt for whale meat :( And now they are after their milk too :(((
