wes_von_papineäu
Our Roving Correspondent
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2006
- Messages
- 494
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- Location
- Vancouver, British Columbia
- Country
- Canada
- Display Name
- Wes von Papineäu
Offered for (hopefully) "General Interest"
ABSOLUTE SALAMANDER (Wes von Papineäu) {Adapated from a version submitted for the Feb 05 issue of OARA Chorus}
We’ve all read various press items about people in exotic locales using a variety of herps for what can be loosely described as ‘medicinal’ or recreational purposes. The various Asiatic ‘snake wines’ that are purported to aid gentlemen of … well my age actually, with ‘performance issues’. A younger generation of a decade long-past swore by the effects of ‘toad licking’ … a cheap and inexpensive way of taking a vacation without getting onto a plane.
The newest herp-related ‘fad’ to be reported-on in the Internet press of 2005 was out of Slovenia and described how people there could purchase ‘Salamander Brandy’ for a little over $4 a bottle! The clandestine home-brew spirit was allegedly good for handling both your medicinal and 'social' needs. The amphibian-enhanced elixir is allegedly highly hallucinogenic and has quite the effect on the libido … even to the extent of making anyone or anything nearby, including the omnipresent Slovenian beech tree, a potential target of the imbibers’ physical affections.
The liquour is supposedly distilled in a variety of ways. One method calls for a handful of live Fire Salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) to be tossed into a barrel of fruit mash (the recipe calls for one sallie for every ten litres of ‘fluid’) and left together for a couple of months. The idea being that the stressed salamanders will exert their poisonous fluids as a defensive effort, which in turns will add a little je ne sais quoi to the resulting quaff.
Other versions of preparation supposedly include putting a bag full of salamanders into a bucket of pure brandy to ‘soak and secrete’, or to hang the animal up by its hind legs and allow hot brandy to trickle down the alarmed animal into waiting bottles. The intent of all these tortures is to cause the amphibian to secrete its protective and allegedly hallucinogenic toxins that will fortify the brandy.
Let’s ignore for a moment trying to figure out why any Slovenian peasant of olden times would try to fortify his brandy with a fire salamander in the first place (remember, in olden times, the salamander was a 'fire devil', deadly poison and not exactly a candidate for replacing any garnishes in the local cocktails)
The Fire Salamander has the largest skin glands found in any terrestrial salamander and when alarmed the animal secretes a milky neurotoxin from the various glands along its body. (A little known fact is that the Fire Salamander can actually spray their secretions up to 200 cm or over six feet!*).
This 'ooze' or neurotoxic alkaloid ‘samandarine’ (C19H31NO2) irritates the mucous membranes of any predator, affects their central nervous system, and can cause death by respiratory paralysis. If consumed, the toxin is liable to cause cramps, high blood pressure and perhaps a feeling of anaesthesia in the limbs … if you haven’t stopped breathing altogether. However, here is little evidence, historical or modern, to indicate that ‘samandarine’ had any desired hallucinogenic or Viagra-like effects.
The power of the Internet has taken an ‘old wives’ tale’ and turned it into a brush fire ‘urban legend’. Slovenian peasants did tell tales of poor and bad-minded people using salamanders to fortify various spirits, but there are no indications that it was actually done. (Remember, a traditional way to demean someone is to place them in bad company – which as the salamander as the symbol of fire and damnation, seems to be a natural and easily available local choice). The myth exploded in western press (well, in the more obscure parts of the Internet actually), when a Slovenian reporter known more for hard research than for his ‘expose’’ style of writing, wrote a tongue-in-cheek item declaring the re-discovery of this ‘traditional Slovenian drink’. Grounded in the author’s good reputation, the humour and local colour contained in his reporting got picked up by the Slovenian public and later the western press … and has resulted in Salamander Brandy becoming a media constructed ‘fact’ based on historical and mostly anecdotal trivia.
The lesson of this story is two-fold. The Internet is a powerful tool of information, but it is more dramatic in spreading ‘mis-information’. The facts of C19H31NO2 cannot compete with the delicious and rich mind-picture of wizened crones bent over a bubbling cauldron of writhing salamanders as they prepare high octane fuel for the minds and procreative bodies of the rustic but exhausted farmers coming home to enjoy ‘a cold one’ after a long day in the fields.
Second. When it comes to herps, no story is too strange or impossible to grab the fears and minds of the general public. This item is just one more addition to the warts-from-frogs, traveling tail-in-mouth-wheel-snake, and gilas-that-don’t-let-go-until-sundown myths that we have to battle against as we attempt to educate people on the real life of our amphibian charges.
When it comes to herps, fiction is w-a-y stranger than truth ,… and more easily believed apparently!
* Brodie, Edmund.D. Jr. & Smatresk, Neal.J. "The Antipredator Arsenal of Fire Salamanders: Spraying of Secretions from Highly Pressurized Dorsal Skin Glands" Herpetologica March 1990 Vol. 46 No. 1. Pages 1 - 7.
ABSOLUTE SALAMANDER (Wes von Papineäu) {Adapated from a version submitted for the Feb 05 issue of OARA Chorus}
We’ve all read various press items about people in exotic locales using a variety of herps for what can be loosely described as ‘medicinal’ or recreational purposes. The various Asiatic ‘snake wines’ that are purported to aid gentlemen of … well my age actually, with ‘performance issues’. A younger generation of a decade long-past swore by the effects of ‘toad licking’ … a cheap and inexpensive way of taking a vacation without getting onto a plane.
The newest herp-related ‘fad’ to be reported-on in the Internet press of 2005 was out of Slovenia and described how people there could purchase ‘Salamander Brandy’ for a little over $4 a bottle! The clandestine home-brew spirit was allegedly good for handling both your medicinal and 'social' needs. The amphibian-enhanced elixir is allegedly highly hallucinogenic and has quite the effect on the libido … even to the extent of making anyone or anything nearby, including the omnipresent Slovenian beech tree, a potential target of the imbibers’ physical affections.
The liquour is supposedly distilled in a variety of ways. One method calls for a handful of live Fire Salamanders (Salamandra salamandra) to be tossed into a barrel of fruit mash (the recipe calls for one sallie for every ten litres of ‘fluid’) and left together for a couple of months. The idea being that the stressed salamanders will exert their poisonous fluids as a defensive effort, which in turns will add a little je ne sais quoi to the resulting quaff.
Other versions of preparation supposedly include putting a bag full of salamanders into a bucket of pure brandy to ‘soak and secrete’, or to hang the animal up by its hind legs and allow hot brandy to trickle down the alarmed animal into waiting bottles. The intent of all these tortures is to cause the amphibian to secrete its protective and allegedly hallucinogenic toxins that will fortify the brandy.
Let’s ignore for a moment trying to figure out why any Slovenian peasant of olden times would try to fortify his brandy with a fire salamander in the first place (remember, in olden times, the salamander was a 'fire devil', deadly poison and not exactly a candidate for replacing any garnishes in the local cocktails)
The Fire Salamander has the largest skin glands found in any terrestrial salamander and when alarmed the animal secretes a milky neurotoxin from the various glands along its body. (A little known fact is that the Fire Salamander can actually spray their secretions up to 200 cm or over six feet!*).
This 'ooze' or neurotoxic alkaloid ‘samandarine’ (C19H31NO2) irritates the mucous membranes of any predator, affects their central nervous system, and can cause death by respiratory paralysis. If consumed, the toxin is liable to cause cramps, high blood pressure and perhaps a feeling of anaesthesia in the limbs … if you haven’t stopped breathing altogether. However, here is little evidence, historical or modern, to indicate that ‘samandarine’ had any desired hallucinogenic or Viagra-like effects.
The power of the Internet has taken an ‘old wives’ tale’ and turned it into a brush fire ‘urban legend’. Slovenian peasants did tell tales of poor and bad-minded people using salamanders to fortify various spirits, but there are no indications that it was actually done. (Remember, a traditional way to demean someone is to place them in bad company – which as the salamander as the symbol of fire and damnation, seems to be a natural and easily available local choice). The myth exploded in western press (well, in the more obscure parts of the Internet actually), when a Slovenian reporter known more for hard research than for his ‘expose’’ style of writing, wrote a tongue-in-cheek item declaring the re-discovery of this ‘traditional Slovenian drink’. Grounded in the author’s good reputation, the humour and local colour contained in his reporting got picked up by the Slovenian public and later the western press … and has resulted in Salamander Brandy becoming a media constructed ‘fact’ based on historical and mostly anecdotal trivia.
The lesson of this story is two-fold. The Internet is a powerful tool of information, but it is more dramatic in spreading ‘mis-information’. The facts of C19H31NO2 cannot compete with the delicious and rich mind-picture of wizened crones bent over a bubbling cauldron of writhing salamanders as they prepare high octane fuel for the minds and procreative bodies of the rustic but exhausted farmers coming home to enjoy ‘a cold one’ after a long day in the fields.
Second. When it comes to herps, no story is too strange or impossible to grab the fears and minds of the general public. This item is just one more addition to the warts-from-frogs, traveling tail-in-mouth-wheel-snake, and gilas-that-don’t-let-go-until-sundown myths that we have to battle against as we attempt to educate people on the real life of our amphibian charges.
When it comes to herps, fiction is w-a-y stranger than truth ,… and more easily believed apparently!
* Brodie, Edmund.D. Jr. & Smatresk, Neal.J. "The Antipredator Arsenal of Fire Salamanders: Spraying of Secretions from Highly Pressurized Dorsal Skin Glands" Herpetologica March 1990 Vol. 46 No. 1. Pages 1 - 7.
