# Eskimo Shit Knife--fact or fantasy?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 7, 2017, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696 "2017-07-07T15:05:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/1 "2017-07-07T15:05:15Z")
Besides being an _ **excellent** _ name for a band, what do you think the likelihood that [it](https://www.google.com/#q=eskimo+shit+knife) actually happened, and would work?
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### Author:  [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/2 "2017-07-07T15:22:35Z")
I’m sorry, are we supposed to know what that is?
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/3 "2017-07-07T15:28:02Z")
> [@voltaire](#):
>
> I’m sorry, are we supposed to know what that is?
There is a link in the OP.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/4 "2017-07-07T15:29:05Z")
> [@voltaire](#):
>
> I’m sorry, are we supposed to know what that is?
If you don’t know, I provided a convenient link to a google search for many links about the story.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/5 "2017-07-07T15:29:52Z")
> [@voltaire](#):
>
> I’m sorry, are we supposed to know what that is?
The word “it” is a link to a Google search.
[From here.](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdx4ad/brown-death-a-history-of-poop-as-a-weapon-111)
> [@](#):
>
> here is, as far as I can see, only one documented case of someone using a frozen shit knife like the one the commenter hoped to stab me to death with.
>
> Wade Davis, an anthropologist and ethnographic researcher from Vancouver, Canada, has several times told the story of an Inuit elder who fashioned his shit into a knife in order to escape the Canadian government.
>
> Wades says the story was told to him by a family he met while in Arctic Bay, an Inuit community in Northern Canada.
About halfway down for the whole story.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/6 "2017-07-07T15:45:37Z")
The link in the OP is a Google search result page … and I find only one credible link there …
The tale is certainly plausible, so given 10,000 years we can say it is nearly certain to have happened at least once … it may be impossible to tell how common the practice was if metal became widespread before written language …
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/7 "2017-07-07T15:53:12Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#):
>
> The tale is certainly plausible
But that is the question–_is_ it plausible that a handful of human feces can be hand-shaped into a knife sharp enough to butcher an animal?
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/8 "2017-07-07T16:01:16Z")
According to the story, the guy used the knife to butcher a dog. I would guess (IANAShitExpert) that a knife made of Inuit doo-doo is essentially an icicle. Would an icicle have the tensile strength to hold its shape whilst sawing raw dogskin?
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@voltaire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voltaire)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/9 "2017-07-07T16:08:48Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> If you don’t know, I provided a convenient link to a google search for many links about the story.
Better to make links a bit longer than two letters. Some of us are reading on phones.
Better still would be to just summarize the concept yourself or provide a quote summarizing it. But a nearly invisible link to a Google search?
Come on, man.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/10 "2017-07-07T16:09:07Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> But that is the question–_is_ it plausible that a handful of human feces can be hand-shaped into a knife sharp enough to butcher an animal?
Closest I can get to a citation in under ten minutes is the Mythbusters busting the myth of an ice bullet … ice is too brittle … I’m not sure if there’s anything in poop that would make it a better knife-fashioning material over ice itself …
Let me re-phrase:
The tale is certainly **possible** , so given 10,000 years we can say it is nearly certain to have happened at least once …
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/11 "2017-07-07T16:14:57Z")
> [@voltaire](#):
>
> Better to make links a bit longer than two letters. Some of us are reading on phones.
> Better still would be to just summarize the concept yourself or provide a quote summarizing it. But a nearly invisible link to a Google search?
>
> Come on, man.
Okay, okay[.](https://www.google.com/search?q=mea+culpa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/12 "2017-07-07T17:59:51Z")
This is very doubtful. While indeed you could form a knife of say ice and have it sharp enuf to make the initial incision, there’s no way it would maintain it’s edge. The dog would be warm, the knife would melt. Ice is pretty soft unless it’s REALLY cold, and even than, not so much:
[http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec02/lec2.htm](http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec02/lec2.htm)
“At 0°C, ice has a hardness of 1.5 on the Mohs scale; at -70°C the hardness is 6 (Nesje and Dahl 2000). However, temperature below -30°C is rarely achieved in glaciers. Next ice is subject to pressure melting In other words, ice can be melted at temperatures below 0°C by application of pressure-”
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### Author:  [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/13 "2017-07-07T18:09:41Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#):
>
> Okay, okay[.](https://www.google.com/search?q=mea+culpa&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)
perfect… bawahahahaa
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/14 "2017-07-07T19:26:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> This is very doubtful. While indeed you could form a knife of say ice and have it sharp enuf to make the initial incision, there’s no way it would maintain it’s edge. The dog would be warm, the knife would melt. Ice is pretty soft unless it’s REALLY cold, and even than, not so much:
> [http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec02/lec2.htm](http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec02/lec2.htm)
> “At 0°C, ice has a hardness of 1.5 on the Mohs scale; at -70°C the hardness is 6 (Nesje and Dahl 2000). However, temperature below -30°C is rarely achieved in glaciers. Next ice is subject to pressure melting In other words, ice can be melted at temperatures below 0°C by application of pressure-”
There could have been some form of pykrete effect going on, but (as a connoisseur of the Mythbusters) I would suspect that if the dog was warm enough to be butchered, then the knife would dull so quickly as to be useless after a single stroke, and if it was cold enough for that to not happen, then the meat probably would be too hard to carve up.
If we replace “butcher” with “poked a hole through the belly really quickly and then tore apart the rest of the way with my hands and a lot of effort”, I might buy it. But I don’t expect that you’d get more out of the knife than that.
Ultimately, you’d need to go all Mythbusters if you really want an answer.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/15 "2017-07-07T19:43:49Z")
> [@Shodan](#):
>
> Would an icicle have the tensile strength to hold its shape whilst sawing raw dogskin?
This sentence makes me miss dude\_robert.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/16 "2017-07-07T19:45:14Z")
Some vegetarians fibrous shit at cold enough temps might be strong enough to stab someone with, possibly hold an edge briefly for some crude skinning.
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### Author:  [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/17 "2017-07-07T19:54:39Z")
It’s absolutely possible. In the early 1900s, arctic explorer Peter Freuchen used such a tool to free himself from ice after surviving an avalanche. He himself cited that he learned to make a shit-knife from previous observations of the natives making all manner of cutting and chopping tools out of their feces.
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/18 "2017-07-07T21:26:16Z")
I am advising all my left-of-center politically active friends to study the concept of the shitknife, and to consider what form (metaphorically) theirs might take, because the day is coming when they will have no other tools to work with.
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### Author:  [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/19 "2017-07-07T21:33:12Z")
Why make shit knives when you could just use a regular icicle?
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [July 7, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eskimo-shit-knife-fact-or-fantasy/790696/20 "2017-07-07T22:09:27Z")
> [@hajario](#):
>
> Why make shit knives when you could just use a regular icicle?
Perhaps it works like pykrete ?:dubious:
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