Davis states that the original source of the tale was Olayuk Narqitarvik. It was allegedly Olayuk’s grandfather in the 1950s who refused to go to the settlements and thus fashioned a knife from his own feces to facilitate his escape by skinning and disarticulating a dog. Davis has admitted that the story could be “apocryphal”, and that initially he thought the Inuit who told him this story was “pulling his leg”.

That’s a long payoff for a practical joke, but totally worth it.

Also, unsurprisingly, they won the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize in Materials Science (lol) for this one (video of the ceremony, Ig Nobel “lecture” from the authors)