animals have been an integral part of human development we've always used them for food
but they have contributed to almost countless other ways the evolution of our culture and
society not just as companions but for travel agriculture medicine protection
and for war we ask a lot of the animal kingdom and in the present we ask a lot for the animal kingdom
you may be able to get a ham sandwich for a few bucks but there are plenty of
other animal derived substances out there which will break the bank and then some
10. scorpion venom arguably the most valuable animal-derived substance ever a gallon of venom
from a death stalker scorpion will set you back 39 million this may be a little misleading of course
as not all liquids are created equal you can head to the ocean and get a gallon of seawater for
nothing a gallon of milk will cost a few dollars and could have come from a dairy farm not too far
from where you live the results of just a few cows you need 2.64 million scorpions to get a gallon
of venom or just one that you milk 2.64 million times that'll take a little over 7000 years if you
did it once a day a scorpion produces about two milligrams of venom they need to be milked by
hand one at a time though some researchers have developed machines that can now speed up the
process so why would anyone spend so much time and money with the risk of death to milk this
venom because of the potential uses in medical science components in the venom show promise in
helping to fight various forms of cancer bone disease and malaria it's been studied as a pain
reliever and as an antibacterial agent there are dozens of different applications being studied and
the future benefits could be incredible 9. horseshoe crab blood horseshoe crabs are curious
little evolutionary throwbacks that haven't changed how they look in about forever they look
like living fossils and are pretty much harmless but they're also remarkably valuable horseshoe
crab blood is used to make something called limulus amibicide lysate thanks to how the blue
blood of the crabs clot this substance abbreviated to lal is incredibly helpful in the manufacturing
of vaccines and other medications lal is able to detect certain bacteria in a vaccine so drop
a little onto a sample and it forms a gelatinous barrier around a dangerous bacterium like e coli
the use of lal in vaccine manufacturing became a huge benefit before the substance was discovered
scientists tested vaccines by injecting rabbits and waiting to see if they contracted the illness
caused by certain vaccines it was much slower and obviously deadly for the rabbits lal is safer and
faster but it does have its own cost horseshoe crabs are not known to want to give up their blood
on a volunteer basis blood harvesting kills a lot of crabs but since it costs up to sixty thousand
dollars per gallon there's certainly financial motivation to keep harvesting it plus it can
save lives and protect rabbits which if we're being honest more people probably care about than
prehistoric crabs number 8. ambergris ambergris is one of those strange products that doesn't
have much of a place in the modern world but still shows up now and then in the news and pop culture
there's even an episode of bob's burgers about it back in the day ambergris was an ingredient
in perfumes it's created in the stomach of sperm whales and it does not come into the world through
the front door whales excrete it into the water possibly as a means of helping them pass sharp
objects that they've inadvertently eaten it's soft and greasy and so you can imagine how that works
while it used to be harvested from whales that were hunted and killed these days it's found
naturally when the odd piece rolls up on shore and someone finds it a single kilogram can be worth
around 130 000 u.s dollars when it first appears the ambergris has an extremely unpleasant smell
that smells like what it literally is feces over time this bellows out and becomes a sweet scent
then it can be combined with other ingredients to make perfume and even medicine and drinks
and yep people used to eat it number 7. almost caviar most people know that caviar is expensive
it's one of those foods you'll always see on the list of priciest foods in the world it's
anonymous with wealth and refinement and really it's just fish eggs but just as you can buy a box
of wine for ten dollars on the corner or spend thousands on a rare vintage so too will caviar
throw you for a monetary loop the priciest caviar on earth is almost caviar it comes
from a remarkably rare and endangered sturgeon found in the caspian sea these albino beluga
sturgeons are found near iran and the eggs are only harvested from fish that are already
over a hundred years old apparently the age makes the caviar smoother and tastier and a kilogram
will cost you around 25 000 number 6. antivenom getting bit by a snake can be a potentially
fatal problem up to 138 000 people die from snake bites per year and another 400 000 suffer serious
injuries this is why anti-venom is so important but it's not cheap by any means there's no
universal anti-venom out there each anti-venom has to match the snake that bit the victim and
that's part of the reason prices can get up to thousand two hundred dollars per vial and one vial
will probably not be enough either nine-year-old oakley yoda got bit by a snake in illinois and
the hospital administered four vials of antivenom for the bite on her toe the hospital bill for that
alone was seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven dollars you could buy things like brown
snake venom online right now for just under four thousand dollars per gram cantil pit viper venom
is the bargain basement one at two hundred dollars per gram number five seagull poop ask most people
what their least favorite part of the beach is and they're probably going to point at the seagulls
despite being very helpful and vital parts of the ecosystem seagulls are also known for being
remarkably bold and greedy if you have food on a beach they are coming for it and they'll also be
very noisy and messy about it the mess is where the value of seagulls comes in seagull guano is
nutrient rich and incredibly useful as natural fertilizer guano harvesters in peru and chile made
12.2 million dollars off seagull poop back in 2018 that involved 27 000 tons of the stuff so it's not
exactly diamonds from the heavens but considering what it is and the fact that it just plops down
wherever it's still a decent price more impressive is that researchers have given a dollar value in
general to seagull excrement aside from uses of fertilizer it's also part of an ecosystem and has
a value to nature including fish all total there's about a billion dollars in value coming out to the
backsides of seagulls every single year 4. ivory most of us know by now that poaching is a big
problem for many animals indigenous to africa and asia few animals are more in the public conscious
when it comes to this than elephants they have become spokes animals but the fight against
poaching as they've been hunted for their ivory for centuries now and while there is much more
awareness these days the poaching still continues and when you find out the price poachers get
you can imagine why most of the ivory currently in circulation is not ancient ivory that people are
reselling it's coming from fresh kills because a pound of ivory can sell for one thousand five
hundred dollars at an average size of around 170 pounds per task that's going to be worth 262
500 to a poacher then double it for both tasks and you've got over half a million dollars for one
elephant that's going to motivate a lot of people to keep killing number three cone snail venom most
people go their whole lives without ever seeing a cone snail and it's just as well because these
aquatic assassins are extremely toxic living in coral and totally blind a cone snail smells its
prey in the water what happens next is berry scifi a deadly efficient the snail extends a long fleshy
proboscis which houses a venom-tipped harpoon which is basically a small sharp tooth the tooth
harpoon pierces their prey and injects it with the extremely deadly toxin it then pulls the paralyzed
fish into its mouth and digests the whole thing excreting any bones along with the used up harpoon
afterward the toxin it uses is incredibly efficient some of the smaller snails are
not a real risk to humans but larger ones can be deadly they sometimes call them cigarette snails
because it said that if they sting you you'll have time for a smoke before you die that's not
necessarily true but the snails have claimed a number of victims in the past despite the
lethality the venom is also valuable due to the countless compounds that are found in it medical
science has been studying this venom for quite a while toward the goal of one day using it to make
painkillers and other medications painkillers a thousand times stronger than morphine have
already been derived from it the cost of the venom is astronomical venom from one of these snails is
worth around 924 million dollars per kilogram the price is in part due to the size these
snails are pretty small so harvesting a kilogram requires thousands upon thousands of snails
they're also deadly enough to kill a human so the job is risky 2. pearls pearls are one of the
strangest items that most people take for granted they're lumped in with jewelry which by and large
is made of metal and stone diamonds rubies gold silver all forming the earth pearls of course
forming oysters oysters and several other kinds of mollusks produce pearls in the fleshy part
inside the shell they secrete calcium carbonate allowing it to build up in layers and produce a
pearl which is typically an iridescent white color perfect pearls have to be round but mollusks can
shoot them out in all kinds of shapes the round ones are worth the most money though pearls can
be harvested from salt water or fresh water they can be wild or cultivated though wild ones are
often worth more dark tahitian pearls can be worth as much as twenty-five thousand dollars the value
of these could get up to a hundred thousand dollars liz taylor wanted a pearl necklace
featuring a pearl known as le pellegrina after her death it sold for 11.8 million
in general pearls are worth somewhere between 300 and 1 500 not bad for something that was created
by a mollusk to protect its insides from some kind of pollutant 1. musk ask most people what they
know about musk and he'll start a conversation about tesla but musk the animal-derived substance
has a long and pricey history it's an essential component of perfumes and colognes it was
traditionally secreted by animals like musk deer the use of real musk from animals is mostly ended
in the world synthetic mask can be produced and is considered much more ethical and cost effective
musk deer produce musk in a gland to attract females the active ingredient is called mascone
and undiluted it's actually pretty offensive there's ammonia mixed with it so the full
strength of pure musk can be overwhelming however once diluted and mixed with other compounds
it produces a distinct odor that many people find pleasant real musk is used in traditional chinese
medicine and some other similar applications the kilogram of musk can sell for around 45 000 us
dollars a single gland only produces around 28 grams so several deer have to die to make this
happen that's why most musk has been replaced with the synthetic kind but the industry hasn't
been stamped out completely so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did
please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching
you