Thread by @dctrjack

So, the IgNobel prizes were announced today. One of the winners?

Knives manufactured from frozen human 💩 "do not work"

Let's talk about frozen shit knives.

The impetus for this study comes from an account of an Inuit man who refused to move from his settlement, deciding to stay on the ice. His family took all his tools away to compel him to leave. But he didn't.

According to the account, the Inuit man went outside, dropped his pants and defecated on the ice.

The research introduction says "he honed the feces into a frozen blade which he sharpened with a spray of saliva."

He also apparently killed a dog with this knife. A little bit much, but if you're alone on the ice, I get it.

Tools made from poo are, apparently, not unprecedented in the record. But there is no evidence this story is true...

...so the scientists performed an experiment.

One of the researchers went on "a diet with high protein and fatty acids consistent with the arctic diet, for 8 days" to... and the paper says this

PRODUCE THE NECESSARY RAW MATERIALS FOR KNIFE PRODUCTION. 😂😂😂😂

They collected poop from day 4 onwards and did so for 5 days, before shaping them in knife molds. Here is an image of the knife mold from the paper: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

They also made some with their own hands.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Shit Knife.

To test the blades they got some pig muscle and tendons and started taking to them with the knife. Neither the molds or the hand-shaped knives were able to cut through the muscle :(

But was that enough for these absolute legends? NO.

"We repeated the experiment using the fecal samples of another team member"

They did it again. With someone else's poo. These poo knives also did not cut through the pig hide.

And, just... end me now because this is from the conclusion.

"future experiments may introduce the prospect of different diets [but] it is unlikely that this would have a significant impact."

😂😂😂😂😂😂

Bravo.

The full paper is here, from researchers at @KentState and @goCMNH.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

and definitely grab the supplementary data for wonderful images like this.

I will note, the team seemingly did not produce the knife in the same way the Inuit man reportedly did -- by using saliva -- but this is still a comprehensive study of shit knives and deserving #IgNobel winner.

Thank you for listening.

The Shit Knife story wrap is here: cnet.com/news/no-knives…