One very smelly sperm whale secretion may soon make one lucky British beachcomber a very happy man.
Ken Wilman told British broadcasters that he had been walking along Morecambe beach in northern England when his dog, Madge, discovered a hard, soccer ball-sized piece of smelly rock.
"She wouldn't leave it alone. I picked it up and it smelt horrible so I knocked it with my walking stick and a small lump came off," he told Sky News television in comments broadcast Thursday. "I put both pieces back on the beach but something in the back of my mind told me it might be something unusual."
One Google search later and Wilman realized that Madge had found something special. Ambergris, formed in the intestinal tract of sperm whales and often vomited or secreted into the ocean, is a waxy substance that can be used in perfumes to prolong their scent. Wilman said he has been offered as much as $68,000 (50,000 Pounds) for the musky material.
Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York, said the find appeared legitimate.
"It's a waxy, yellow-gray piece of flotsam. I'm sure that 95 percent of people would walk past it without further thought," he said in a telephone interview. He praised Wilman's quick thinking, invoking the scientific dictum that "fortune favors the prepared mind."
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