• magnetosphere@fedia.io
    80·
    9 months ago

    Although I will admit that’s an interesting little fact, I would have been perfectly fine not knowing it.

    • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      41·
      9 months ago

      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?

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        9 months ago

        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.)

            • cabbage@piefed.social
              11·
              9 months ago

              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.

    • CoolGirl586@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        Yup.

        I’m thinking it either flopped or was never a thing.

        I doubt it’s something that could be reliably commercialized.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        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.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        291·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • Dave@lemmy.nzEnglish
          17·
          9 months ago

          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…

        • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          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.

            • Tessellecta@feddit.nlEnglish
              11·
              9 months ago

              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.

              • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
                3·
                9 months ago

                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.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      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.

  • Gbagginsthe3rd@aussie.zoneEnglish
    57·
    9 months ago

    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

    • cordlesslamp@lemmy.todayEnglish
      74·
      9 months ago

      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.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        311·
        9 months ago

        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.

      • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        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.

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        10·
        9 months ago

        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.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    251·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      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.

          • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            9 months ago

            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…

            • kase@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              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⁠)⁠/⁠¯

              https://youtu.be/I-NvBXQ4cNs?si=tdftmQoopATTX1_a

              • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                3·
                9 months ago

                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 ;)

  • crawancon@lemm.eeEnglish
    14·
    9 months ago

    I’ve never had whale milk but I am willing to give it a whirl. who’s with me

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    9 months ago

    that would bring a new meaning to “full creamfat” ice cream… (editted a word)

  • terry_tibbs@lemmy.mlEnglish
    82·
    9 months ago

    Would this be the freshest cheese possible? Considering that cheese is traditionally not fresh in the slightest.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.worldEnglish
      24·
      9 months ago

      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.

  • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1510·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • tiredofsametab@kbin.run
      17·
      9 months ago

      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).

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        31·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • ryunoen@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          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.

          • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            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.

            • ryunoen@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
              1·
              9 months ago

              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.