A healthy human liver contains 575 international units (IU) of vitamin A per gram while a polar bear’s liver contains between 24,000 and 35,000 IU per gram. Compare that to the tolerable upper level of vitamin A intake for a healthy adult human: 10,000. Signs of toxicity generally occur when approximately 25,000 to 33,000 IU are consumed.

Illness severity depended on how much liver the explorers consumed, but symptoms typically included drowsiness, sluggishness, irritability, severe headache, bone pain, blurred vision and vomiting. While milder cases merely involved flaking around the mouth, some accounts reported cases of full-body skin loss. Even the thick skin on the bottoms of a patient’s feet could peel away, leaving the underlying flesh bloody and exposed. The worst cases ended in liver damage, hemorrhage, coma and death.

      • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        Sure, tons of them in zoos. Well more than billionaires.

        Tho I’d like to see them in zoos instead. Rare animal and all. Worth gawking at the way people back in the day would gawk at the strange “savages” from distant lands…

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          People who hoard money like that are just a rare variant of the crazy cat lady.

          • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            10 months ago

            No need to get misogynistic, friend.

            “Crazy cat ladies” (formerly known as: witches, spinsters, old maids, among others) have historically been women who don’t marry, and prefer low-key companionship with cats (who demand a consensual relationship, and won’t tolerate being imposed upon) and other animals, as well as woman-to-woman friendships, over traditional domestic duties as a brood mare and household servant.

            The whole hoarding thing is a trope, as it can happen to men and women alike, just like all hoarding tendencies. It may be slightly more common in women because women are raised to be more nurturing and compassionate, and often taught to ignore the practical boundaries of their efforts in pursuit of perfection, but that doesn’t mean it is exclusive in any way.

            But either way, “crazy cat lady” is highly problematic language, and if you care at all about such things, you may want to avoid using it in the future.

            https://www.kqed.org/arts/13891913/how-the-crazy-cat-lady-became-one-of-pop-cultures-most-enduring-sexist-tropes

            • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              You’re way overreading what I wrote and pretty much replacing what I meant with something else from your own mind.

              I just meant it as a well known example of hoarding.

              I actually live in the same building as a lady who is crazy (i.e. has deep psychological problems, if I’m not mistaken schizoprenia), has LOTS of cats and even regularly feeds the local strays - quite literally a crazy lady that loves cats.

              No need to go into your cultural assumptions and presumptions about some local stereotype most of which doesn’t even apply in my own culture.

      • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        By an order of magnitude.

        WWF estimates around 26,000 polar bears remaining (22,000-30,000). And there are 2640 billionaires globally according to Forbes.