HE ATE WHAT???
William Buckland loved collecting fossils. As a professor at Oxford, his living quarters were filled from floor to ceiling with samples of ammonites, fossilized bones, plants, and shells. One student made a visit to Buckland’s rooms in 1824 and said there was only one rickety chair that was not covered with rocks or fossils. Buckland was the original dinosaur bone hoarder.
Buckland became famous for researching and writing about giant fossilized lizard bones that he named Megalosaurus. It was Buckland's writing that popularized the term dinosaur. And it was Buckland who encouraged students to study the ancient fossils by giving vivid lectures about what he believed life was like in prehistoric times.
Every part of dinosaur life interested him, but he was especially fascinated by dinosaur feces (poop). Breaking open the fossilized feces, Buckland was able to learn about what the ancient animals ate and develop theories about prehistoric food chains. Buckland believed that the stomach was what ruled the world. Animals had to eat to stay alive, and hunger was a primary drive in nature.
Buckland himself was fascinated with eating and claimed it was his goal to eat everything in the animal kingdom. And he meant everything. He tasted all of the animals common to England, such as mice, hedgehogs, badgers, snakes, and bats. Then, he decided to start cooking more exotic animals. Friends and colleagues who went to dinner at Buckland’s home could never be sure what they were eating. He served elephant trunk, crocodile, horse's tongue, sliced porpoise head, and rhino meat. If he could catch it, Buckland would eat it.
He wasn’t picky, but did tell people that the taste of mole was repulsive and he gagged while eating a bluebottle fly. People wondered why in the world he wanted to taste so many strange animals. Perhaps he was just adventurous, or maybe he considered it research for the eating habits of the prehistoric animals he loved. Why did he want to eat every type of animal? It’s a mystery (one no one’s quite daring enough to solve for themselves!).
Buckland himself fascinated with eating and claimed it was his goal to eat everything in the animal kingdom.
It is documented that Buckland was always willing to taste anything at any time. Once, when he was touring a cathedral, he was shown a dark spot on the floor. The legend was that the dark spot was the holy blood of a saint. Buckland dropped to his knees and licked the floor. He stood up and told the tour guide that it was not blood but bat urine. The cathedral had bats roosting in the roof. Nobody asked Buckland how he recognized the taste of bat urine.
The most astonishing story of Buckland was told by writer Augustus Hare. He claimed that Buckland was visiting Lord Harcourt’s home just outside of Oxford. Lord Harcourt was showing his dinner guests one of his many treasures. He passed around a small silver casket and claimed that it held the dried heart of King Louis XVI. When the casket reached Buckland, he told the group he’d never eaten a king’s heart. Before anyone could stop him, he popped the heart in his mouth and it was gone—lost to Buckland’s digestive system.
Despite his crazy eating habits, Buckland lived to be 72 years old. He died in Oxford in 1856.
