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After the dig, the volunteers took the seal scat out

May 11, 2018 by Kenneth Newton

After the dig, the volunteers took the seal scat out of the freezer and placed it into the fridge for a week. While it's still cold, the liquid that was preserved in the seal stools was transferred to a separate jar. That was then whisked to a computer that records all of the liquid's contents and then dumped back into a container in a freezer.

"You're not allowed to put things in a container," Warren said. "We don't want to put food in anything that might go bad, so we made it out of a sealed container and we have never seen anything like it."

The first of three batches of the seal scat, which have not been seen by any other human on the planet, was tested on February 26.

While the swine was still in the freezer, all of the samples were processed and stored in a glass jar that was opened with a sieve. The researchers found that the scat contained the same amount of gluten as the scat that was frozen at the same time. That is, since gluten is not a protein, it is not stored properly.

"This was a fairly typical process," Matson told NIWA. "We were going to freeze the contents of the scat just to test for gluten. But all we found were the bones and the seaweed."

During the three days the seal scat was frozen, the researchers found gluten in the scat as well. The researchers also discovered an unusual presence of gluten in the scat.