Why do humans eat cooking oil?
Because fats and fats provide energy to humans, help absorb fat-soluble vitamins, and also improve the flavor of foods, such as lard bibimbap, which I often ate as a child.
It is said that when the ancients put animal meat on the fire and roasted it, there was always a liquid dripping down, and later someone collected it and found that these liquids were fragrant and fragrant, and adding them to other foods can significantly improve the flavor, so the oil industry spread.
And what about the primitive tribes that lived in the jungles of South America? And how do they get their cooking oil?
A brief look at the "oil owl"
The oil owl, also known as the oil nighthawk, is distributed in the tropical rainforests of South America, with a body length of about 40~48 cm, and the width of the wings can reach 1 meter after the wings are expanded.
They are nocturnal creatures that hide in burrows during the day, and when night falls, swarms of oily birds make high-pitched cries and pour out of their nests, and like bats, they use echolocation to determine obstacles around them.
The oily owl mainly eats plant fruits, and its sharp, hooked beak helps them peck at the pulp easily, and during the breeding season, the oily owl uses a mixture of saliva and pulp residue to build a nest on the rock wall.
Why are oily plovers so fat?
From the perspective of evolutionary theory, if birds want to soar in the sky, they will deliberately develop in the direction of "lightness", if the weight is excessive, the functional requirements for wings will increase, resulting in many birds losing the ability to fly, completely reduced to land birds, such as ostriches, sandpipers, cassowaries, bald boat ducks, etc.
Luckily, oily owls have very wide wings, and the reason why they are so fat is mainly related to food.
Although it belongs to the order Nightjar, it feeds on plant fruits, mainly Lauraceae (Avocado), Palm (Oil Palm) and Oliveaceae.
Careful friends have found that the oil content of these fruits is very high, taking avocados as an example, the fat content of an avocado accounts for about 15%, and the calories are more than 3 times that of ordinary fruits.
Long-term intake of a large amount of oil is the root cause of obesity in the oily owl, just like a person who eats sweets, fried foods, carbonated drinks, etc. all day long, as long as he does not change his diet, it is difficult to lose weight.
Local aborigines capture oil owls for oil refining
To this day, there are still a large number of primitive tribes living in the tropical rainforests of South America, and they have little contact with modern society, so they cannot obtain good vegetable oil through trade.
Relying on the mountains to eat the mountains and the water to eat the water, the oil is of great use to the human body, so the aborigines can only get oil from the tropical rainforest, and the oil owl, which happens to be called the "walking oil bag", is the favorite source of oil for the aborigines.
Don't look at the oil owls are vegetarian, but their attack power is not bad, and they make a high-pitched cry in swarms inside the cave, often exceeding 100 decibels.
What is the concept of 100 decibels?
The sound in the library is about 20~40 decibels, the sound of normal conversation in the room is about 40~60 decibels, and the noisy restaurant is about 70~90 decibels.
100~120 decibels is an unbearable range for humans, such as the sound of firecrackers, the sound of airplanes taking off, etc., so the decibel in residential areas is generally below 60.
What damage will the oil owl cause to the human body if it makes a sound of 100 decibels?
According to the World Health Organization, 100 decibels is equivalent to a high-power hair dryer turning on the maximum gear, constantly ringing in your ears, and just 1 minute will cause human distraction and easy to cause anxiety and irritability.
Once the environment stays at 100 decibels for 15 minutes, the human hearing function will be irreversibly damaged, note the word "irreversible".
When the natives enter the cave, once they are attacked by a swarm of oil owls, the consequences can be imagined, and the ruggedness in the cave makes it take a lot of effort to escape even if they are panicked, so when hunting oil owls, the natives will also suffer a lot of damage.
In particular, the oil content in the body of young birds is 1.5 times higher than that of adult oily owls, and the destructiveness of juveniles is almost non-destructive.
Therefore, the aborigines chose to avoid the edge, and during the night feeding period of the adult oiled owl, they quietly entered the burrow, smashed the nest with a long pole, and quickly picked up the young oiled owl that fell on the ground and left, for fear of being hurt by the cry of the adult oily owl.
According to the natives, the oil extracted from the oiled owl is of the highest quality among the many rainforest creatures, and they also use the oil of the oily bird to light the fire.
The carbon and hydrogen in the oil and fat react with oxygen, and the exothermic reaction will release light and heat, so animal fat can indeed be used for lighting, and even some animal fat can be used as biofuel in diesel engines after special treatment.
The primitive tribes had a large demand for grease and light sources, and it happened that both of these needs could be solved with oily owls, so a large number of oily owls were killed every year.
Fortunately, the reproduction ability of the oily owl is not bad, and the number of indigenous people in the primeval rainforest is not large, and the oily owl can barely maintain the population in recent years.
Fortunately, more and more organizations are now discovering the plight of the oiled owl, and some countries have begun to protect the oily owl, such as the Venezuelan government's establishment of a national park in the Capri Cave, which has carved out a pure land for the oily owl.
On the other hand, modern society is also strengthening exchanges with primitive tribes, and actively guiding indigenous people to obtain oil through other means, such as making vegetable oil from the fruits of other plants, and releasing oily birds to survive.