[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)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) 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)