[HN Gopher] Testosterone in tusks: Hormones in mammoth fossils e...
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Testosterone in tusks: Hormones in mammoth fossils excite
paleontologists
 
Author : LinuxBender
Score  : 19 points
Date   : 2023-05-03 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago)
 
web link (arstechnica.com)
w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
 
| nkozyra wrote:
| I can't tell if it's just late in the day or if that's a really
| poorly written article across the board.
| 
| > Remarkably, this is the first time hormones have been seen in
| the extant or the extinct.
| 
| Later in the article they say they identified testosterone in
| modern elephants. Was this done _in response_ to finding it in
| mammoths? It's the only way the first part of this article makes
| sense.
| 
| > Given their close relation to Asian elephants, is it surprising
| that musth has been discovered?
| 
| Huh? This is the first mention of Asian elephants in this
| article. Have they had hormonal markers found in their tusks? If
| so, back to question #1.
| 
| > By contrast, they couldn't test for female hormones to test
| "for pregnancy, for instance," because they didn't have a modern
| female elephant tusk to compare.
| 
| This is confusing. Is it because they're looking at Asian
| elephants (where the females do not have tusks) or because ...
| other reasons?
| 
| I realize this is a freelance article, but ... yikes.
 
| pengaru wrote:
| Does this mean all those Chinese buyers of poached rhinoceros
| horns for supposed virility are actually getting something if
| there's testosterone in there?
 
  | LinuxBender wrote:
  | Probably not unless it was an incredibly high dose due to bio-
  | availability [1] assuming you meant by eating it. There are
  | ways to by-pass the first pass effect [2].
  | 
  | [1] -
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacokinetics_of_testostero...
  | 
  | [2] -
  | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacokinetics_of_testostero...
 
  | ftxbro wrote:
  | Rhino horns are modified hair and mammoth tusks are modified
  | teeth so they are very different. But maybe there can be some
  | testosterone in the rhino horns idk.
  | 
  | EDIT: It seems you are right, there is some testosterone in
  | hair (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002160050330)
  | so probably there can be some amount in rhino horns. I don't
  | know if eating it would have medical effects, for example maybe
  | there's not enough or maybe it's not in the right form or maybe
  | eating it doesn't work.
 
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(page generated 2023-05-03 23:00 UTC)