Have you ever seen some specimens soaked in a transparent tank? In fact, in many laboratories or museums, many animal specimens are preserved with alcohol. The technical term for this technique is fluid preservation.
This technique can be traced back to the 17th century, and scientists have always relied on this technique to preserve specimens. According to the American Museum of Natural History , if handled properly, the fluid-preserved samples can be stored for hundreds of years.
In fact, high concentrations of alcohol are toxic to microorganisms. For example, our common wine is made from yeast, which divides the sugar in grapes into food and then discharges alcohol. But in the process, the yeast secreted too much alcohol and the concentration was too high, and as a result, it killed itself. So everyone will find that many wines seem to taste better as they age, and they will not expire. When the alcohol content in wine reaches 14%, it can effectively delay the growth of bacteria.
But higher concentrations of alcohol can be used for long-term storage of other organic substances, such as DNA, animal tissues, and even the entire animal body. Many museums use high concentrations of alcohol for long-term storage of organisms.
Catherine Masrenikov, the fish collection manager of the Burke Museum in Seattle, USA, said that they may take some tissue samples for DNA analysis, and then inject the fish with and formalin. It stops biological processes inside. After that, the fish specimens will be immersed in a jar filled with 70% alcohol, and then the organisms will be stored for a long time. You may be wondering why it is 70% alcohol. To this extent, it can ensure that there is enough water in the solution to keep the tissue water, and it also helps the animal or specimen to maintain its shape.It can effectively prevent the growth of mold and bacteria.
A higher concentration of alcohol, such as 95% ethanol, can act as a dehydrating agent, which means that objects are immersed in such a high concentration of alcohol, cells, tissues and samples The moisture will be removed and replaced by alcohol. Lack of water can cause changes in water-sensitive proteins. They may denature or harden to better fix the shape of the specimen. High concentrations of alcohol are often used to preserve DNA.
The most difficult point in using alcohol to preserve items is how strong alcohol should be used? Whether it is too much or too little alcohol concentration will affect the shape and flexibility of the sample, and even affect its ability to preserve items. In other words, failure to determine a reasonable alcohol concentration may cause the sample to dry out due to water loss, or become brittle due to hardening of the protein. However, sometimes it does not matter even if such a situation occurs. The main reason is to consider whether the goal of preserving samples has been achieved.
If there is too much water in the sample, it may contain too many microorganisms, which will cause the sample to deteriorate faster. If this is the case, then the alcohol concentration preset by the professionals may not be enough, so it is often necessary to change the alcohol within 24 hours for the preparation of animal specimens.
Snake wine
Snake wine has been one of the ways that the Chinese have used snakes as medicine since ancient times. It is precisely because of the antiviral effect of alcohol that the body of a snake can be stored in alcohol for a very long period of time. But I believe everyone has seen stories about snakes being soaked in wine but never dead.
Snakes are cold-blooded animals. They only need to consume very little energy to sustain life. Therefore, their ability to survive in extreme environments is very powerful. If amateurs do not handle snake wine properly, It is possible that the snake will survive the snake wine,When you open the lid yourself, unfortunate things will happen.
In fact, the effect of snake wine seems to have not been recognized by science. It is a folk remedy. It is recommended that you do not take the poisonous snake soaked in wine at will, because there is a serious safety hazard.
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