# What's the "Whale Tumour" (or "tumor") story/urban legend? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 23, 2006, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720 "2006-07-23T17:16:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/1 "2006-07-23T17:16:43Z")
The Wkipedia entry on Urban Legends ([Urban legend - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend)) says “In the UK, urban legends are sometimes referred to as WTSes (Whale Tumour Stories), from a famous World War II story about whale meat.” I could find nothing on Snopes on this story, except a reference to this book: [http://www.snopes.com/sources/tumour.htm](http://www.snopes.com/sources/tumour.htm) “The Tumour in the Whale (1978)” which I’m sure would have the story, but it’s only being sold used for 30 bucks on Amazon, which is a little more than I’d like to spend. Googling didn’t help, either. What are the details of this story? And why doesn’t Snopes have a listing for it? Or did I just miss it somehow? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/2 "2006-07-23T17:31:10Z")
A little more info [here](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/murbanlegend.html) of all places. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/3 "2006-07-23T17:36:27Z")
A little more info [here](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/murbanlegend.html) of all places. When I was a kid I used to call them “poodle in the microwave” stories after the old lady who supposedly tried to dry her poodle in a microwave oven after bathing it. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/4 "2006-07-23T17:50:13Z")
Oh, come on, you must have heard it. It’s famous story from WWII. All together now _Whale meat again Don’t know where, don’t know when …_ ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/5 "2006-07-23T18:24:35Z")
:applauding in awe: ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/6 "2006-07-23T19:48:32Z")
There’s a bit more on it in _The Choking Doberman_ by urban legendologist Jan Peter Brunvand, p. 51: > [@](#): > > Rodney Dale, an English collector of apocryphal stories, coined this useful term “foaf” for the most common alleged urban legend source. In his amusing book _The Tumor in the Whale_ (1978), Dale explained that while first-person accounts or named second-person accounts of even the most bizarre incidnets do have some probabilty of being true, the third-hand report of a friend-of-a-friend’s experience has every likelihood of being what he called a “'whale-tumor story,” or a “WTS.” (He refers to a legend about some whale meat bought in wartime England when other meats were scarce; it was found “'gently throbbing” on a plate, since it contained “a live tumor.” When you try to verify a wild story like that, Rodney Dale found, you end up searching for a non-existent foaf.) ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/7 "2006-07-23T19:57:29Z")
Jan Harold Brunvand mentions the story in a few of his books, but as far as I know doesn’t have a really detailed account of it. On page 23 of _The Baby Train_ (1993) he says that Rodney Dale “told a World War II story about whale meat sold in England as a beef substitute. Supposedly, someone saw a chunk of whale quivering in the fridge and upon examining it discovered ‘a live tumor gently throbbing.’” ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/8 "2006-07-23T20:16:41Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] Oh, come on, you must have heard it. It’s famous story from WWII. All together now _Whale meat again Don’t know where, don’t know when …_ [/QUOTE] See, it’s these kind of things that suck in perhaps one or two lurkers here. And they end up staying and paying. You get a gold star. ---
**Author:** ![Tammi\_Terrell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Tammi\_Terrell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tammi_Terrell)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/9 "2006-07-23T20:44:41Z")
For those who are interested, here’s Rodney Dale’s telling from _The Tumour in the Whale_, an absolutely essential book [1] of ULish anecdotes, > [@](#): > > [His friend George Melly narrates.] During the war, when whale-meat was offered as a substitute for beef, a woman bought some whale-meat steak, took it home, and put it on a plate before preparing it for the oven. Her husband was sitting in the living-room, and suddenly a movement in the kitchen caught his eye . . . on investigation, they found that it was the whale-meat, which contained a live tumour, gently throbbing . . . > > A whole-tumour story is one of those that people swear is true – it happened to a friend of theirs, but you never actually meet this friend. And you keep hearing of the same thing happening to friends up and down the country . . . [p. 13] (By the way, Rodney hasn’t claimed credit for coining “whale tumour story.” That distinction, he notes, goes to his friend George.) – Tammi Terrell [1] London: George Duckworth & Co Ltd, 1978. ISBN 0-7156-1314-6. If you’ve an interest in ULs and “apocryphal anecdotes,” the book is well worth the $30, though you can sometimes get it cheaper if you’re patient. By the way, Dale’s recent _The Wordsworth Book of Urban Legend_ (2005), available in paperback, is somewhat of an updated version of _Tumour_. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/10 "2006-07-23T20:49:25Z")
Thanks all! I knew it would be a nicely gross little tale. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/11 "2006-07-23T21:14:21Z")
Why would a tumor remain alive after being separated from it’s blood and oxygen supply, any more than any other piece of flesh? Ok, so it’s just a gross-out story. Still… ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/12 "2006-07-23T21:33:58Z")
[Interesting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dantzig) > [@](#): > > Truth in Urban Legends > An event in Dantzig’s life became the origin of a famous urban legend in 1939 while he was a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Near the beginning of a class for which Dantzig was late, professor Jerzy Neyman wrote two examples of famously unsolved statistics problems on the blackboard. When Dantzig arrived, he assumed that the two problems were a homework assignment and wrote them down. According to Dantzig, the problems “seemed to be a little harder than usual”, but a few days later he handed in completed solutions for both, still believing that they were an assignment that was overdue. Six weeks later, Dantzig received a visit from an excited professor Neyman, who had prepared one of Dantzig’s solutions for publication in a mathematical journal. Years later another researcher, Abraham Wald, was preparing to publish a paper which arrived at a conclusion for the second problem, and included Dantzig as its co-author when he learned of the earlier solution. > > This story began to spread, and was used as a motivational lesson demonstrating the power of positive thinking. Over time Dantzig’s name was removed and facts were altered, but the basic story persisted in the form of an urban legend. ---
**Author:** ![gabriela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/db5fbb/32.png) [@gabriela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gabriela)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2006, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/13 "2006-07-23T21:42:31Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] Why would a tumor remain alive after being separated from it’s blood and oxygen supply, any more than any other piece of flesh? Ok, so it’s just a gross-out story. Still… [/QUOTE] It wouldn’t, any more than any other piece of flesh. It’s just a gross-out story. The throbbing ruined my suspension of disbelief I have to say. ---
**Author:** ![mks57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9bd4f/32.png) [@mks57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mks57)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/14 "2006-07-24T04:04:32Z")
[QUOTE=gabriela] It wouldn’t, any more than any other piece of flesh. It’s just a gross-out story. The throbbing ruined my suspension of disbelief I have to say. [/QUOTE] At least it didn’t burst, unleashing thousands of poisonous spiders. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/15 "2006-07-24T04:25:29Z")
Or Chihuahuaesque rodents. There’s a shitload of vowels in “Chihuahuaesque,” aren’t there? ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2006, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-whale-tumour-or-tumor-story-urban-legend/365720/16 "2006-07-24T06:46:08Z")
[QUOTE=Lumpy] Why would a tumor remain alive after being separated from it’s blood and oxygen supply, any more than any other piece of flesh? [/quote] For the same reason that, in a later version of the story, a man orders a chicken filet sandwich, no mayo, and discovers that what he THOUGHT was mayo was actually YELLOW PUS SQUIRTING OUT OF A TUMAH! - because: > [@Lumpy](#): > > it’s just a gross-out story. And some people never let logic get in the way of a good squicktale.