Licking Rocks

I am not opposed to licking a rock now and then.  My reason for doing so is much more practical than the practice of licking poisonous toads to experience a psychedelic trip.  And I am not alone in the habit of licking rocks.  In fact, an Ig Nobel prize was recently rewarded for “research” in the matter of licking rocks.

If you are unfamiliar, the Ig Nobel Prize is something of a parody of the more widely known Nobel Prize.  Ig Nobel prizes are awarded annually to celebrate unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research.

Among the 2023 winners was Jan Zalasiewicz of Poland who earned the chemistry and geology Ig Nobel prize for explaining why scientists like to lick rocks.  “Licking the rock, of course, is part of the geologist’s and paleontologist’s armory of tried-and-much-tested techniques used to help survive in the field,” Zalasiewicz wrote in The Paleontological Association newsletter in 2017. “Wetting the surface allows fossil and mineral textures to stand out sharply, rather than being lost in the blur of intersecting micro-reflections and micro-refractions that come out of a dry surface.”

See, that’s it.  I also lick rocks to better assess them as a specimen for my collection. And some don’t taste particularly bad.

—Mitchell Hegman