Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world. Selling for up to $35,000 per kilo, it's revered and relished by aristocrats across the globe. But it's an acquired taste. Turns out, caviar wasn't always so valuable. In the 19th century, sturgeon species in the US were so common that there are accounts of caviar being offered in saloons for free, like bar nuts. In Europe, fishermen were feeding the eggs to their pigs, or leaving it on the beach to spoil. What changed? Tech Insider tells you all you need to know about tech: gadgets, how-to's, gaming, science, digital culture, and more. Subscribe to our channel and visit us at: http://www.businessinsider.com/sai TI on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tech_insider/ TI on Twitter: https://twitter.com/techinsider -------------------------------------------------- Following is the transcript of the video: Similar to true champagne, caviar doesn't come from just anywhere. This, for example, is not caviar. To get the real thing, it has to be eggs from a sturgeon. There are 27 species around the world in North America, Europe, and Asia. But probably not for long.  Arne Ludwig: In this case, sturgeon will die out because humans are over-harvesting their populations and destroying their habitats. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature placed 18 species on its Red List of Threatened Species, making the sturgeon the most endangered group of species on Earth. But lists like these are bittersweet. On the one hand, they can help protect the sturgeon from further population decline. On the other hand, the rarer that caviar becomes, the more we can't get enough of it. There's actually an economic idea that explains this. It's called the rarity value thesis and it describes how "rarity increases the value of the item." Sturgeon can weigh up to several thousand pounds, and produce hundreds of pounds of roe at a time. The world record belongs to a beluga sturgeon that weighed 2,520 pounds and yielded 900 pounds of roe. Today, she'd be worth about half a million dollars.  It wasn't until around the 20th century when these freshwater fish and their eggs became a rare commodity. Pollution poisoned their waters and dams blocked their spawning grounds upstream. They had nowhere to reproduce and continued to be overfished for their meat and roe. On top of that, it takes 8-20 years for a female to sexually mature, depending on the species. She can produce millions of eggs at a time, but odds are that only one will survive to adulthood. In the end, the sturgeon population couldn't keep up with demand and their coveted eggs became the jewels of the luxury food scene. Today, caviar imports and exports are closely regulated in the US., which is partly why it's so expensive.  Deborah Keane: People forget that every single egg, every one of these eggs is taken off by hand. Now, remember that we're dealing with a raw seafood endangered species. So it is basically like eating and dealing with edible elephant tusks. It is that heavily regulated. That's why today, the majority of caviar comes from sturgeon farms. Deborah Keane: Little did I know that by 2011, all wild caviar would become illegal on the planet. When I started there were six farms in the world and only two producing caviar in the world and that was in 2004. Now, there are 2,000 farms. One farm, in particular, in China called Kaluga Queen produces 35% of the world's caviar. Caviar there is harvested with the classic Russian and Iranian technique, which involves killing the fish and then extracting the eggs. Other farms are exploring a different technique, which doesn't involve killing the fish. It's called stripping. The fish are injected with a hormone that triggers their urge to release eggs. Farmers have been doing this for many years, but not to get caviar — just to produce more fish. It wasn't until recently that people started canning this stuff and selling it as caviar. Dmitrijs Tracuks: The biggest thing is that yes, fish stays alive. You have really small impact on the fish because you do it really fast. You take the fish out of the water, you put it on the special holding facility. The fish has already started to spawn and so all that requires is to press on the belly, massage the belly and the caviar will just flow out of the fish. The idea behind no-kill caviar is a commendable one, but it has yet to catch on. Either way, with caviar farms in place, this gives the wild sturgeon population a chance to recover. But whether or not, that happens is largely up to us.: https://www.instagram.com/tech_insider/ Why Caviar Is So Expensive | So Expensive

Envision Glasses are AI-powered smartglasses that help people who are blind or have low vision live more independently. This assistive wearable technology uses ChatGPT and Google Glass hardware to capture and convert the visual information around the user into speech. And thanks to more widespread 5G networks, these smartglasses are able to process this information much more quickly, providing a much more seamless experience for visually impaired users. Take a look at how the Envision Glasses work, and how it assists the blind and visually impaired. Special thanks to Sam Seavey of The Blind Life for his thoughts and experience with the Envision Glasses. https://www.youtube.com/c/theblindlife #5gplaybook #att #smartglasses ------------------------------------------------------ Business Insider tells you all you need to know about business, finance, tech, retail, and more. Visit our homepage for the top stories of the day: https://www.businessinsider.com Insider Business on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider Insider Business on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insiderbusiness Insider Business on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/businessinsider Insider Business on Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/Business_Insider/5319643143 Insider Business on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@businessinsider Smartglasses Use ChatGPT To Help The Blind And Visually Impaired | 5G Playbook

Sooam is a Korean company that has nearly perfected dog cloning. When we visited their labs in Seoul, we were blown away by how simple the process was. Watch and find out how it's all done. Produced by Will Wei & Drake Baer. Animations by Rob Ludacer. Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TWITTER: https://twitter.com/techinsider INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/tech_insider/ TUMBLR: http://techinsider.tumblr.com/

Chef and "Appetites" author Anthony Bourdain explains reveals the biggest mistake people make when cooking a steak. Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TWITTER: https://twitter.com/businessinsider INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/businessinsider/ TUMBLR: http://businessinsider.tumblr.com/

I ate a lot of interesting McDonald's food on a recent trip to South Korea. But the strangest, most intriguing food I tried was live octopus. It was tough, slimy, and still squirming around even after being chopped into tiny pieces. Not to mention the octopus arms suction on to your tongue and throat when you try to chew them. Produced by Will Wei Read more: http://www.techinsider.io/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/techinsider TWITTER: https://twitter.com/techinsider INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/tech_insider/ TUMBLR: http://techinsider.tumblr.com/

Growing up in Montana, travel and lifestyle reporter Jordan Erb spent lots of time in the countryside on her grandparents' farm. But she hasn't really been able to experience that same outdoors vibe since moving to New York City. Jordan discovered a place called Bluebird Farm Alpacas that's less than an hour away from the city. There, she could spend the day hiking, feeding, and even doing yoga with alpacas. So, she decided to escape the city for a day, and spend some time in the great outdoors surrounded by nature and a bunch of alpacas. ------------------------------------------------------ #insider #yoga #adventure Insider is great journalism about what passionate people actually want to know. That’s everything from news to food, celebrity to science, politics to sports and all the rest. It’s smart. It’s fearless. It’s fun. We push the boundaries of digital storytelling. Our mission is to inform and inspire. Visit our homepage for the top stories of the day: https://www.insider.com Insider on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insider Insider on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insider Insider on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisisinsider Insider on Snapchat: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/Insider/2708030621 Insider on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@insider Alpaca Yoga Near NYC | Everyday Adventurer | Insider

Horseshoe crab blood is a vital resource to the medical field. It's unique in more ways than one: the blue color and its ability to identify bacterial contamination in small quantities. Horseshoe crab blood contains a special amebocyte that is separated and then used in FDA testing. There's a lot of questions as to how blood harvesting affects the American horseshoe crab population, but some researchers are dedicated to the cause of protecting such a significant resource. ------------------------------------------------------ Business Insider tells you all you need to know about business, finance, tech, retail, and more. Subscribe to our channel and visit us at: http://www.businessinsider.com/ BI on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/businessinsider/ BI on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/businessinsider/ BI on Twitter: https://twitter.com/businessinsider -------------------------------------------------- Following is a transcript of the video: Narrator: This blueish liquid is one of the most expensive resources in the world. No, it's not the blue milk from "Star Wars." It's actually blood from a horseshoe crab, and the stuff this blood makes costs $60,000 a gallon. So why is it so expensive and who's buying horseshoe crab blood? The blue color comes from copper in the blood. But that's not it's most interesting feature. The blood contains a special clotting agent. It's used to make a concoction called Limulus amebocyte lysate or LAL. Before LAL, scientists had no easy way of knowing whether a vaccine or medical tool was contaminated with bacteria. Like E. coli or salmonella. Scientists would inject vaccines into huge numbers of rabbits and then basically wait for symptoms to show up. But when LAL was approved for use in 1970, it changed everything. Drop a minuscule amount of it onto a medical device or vaccine, and the LAL will encase any gram-negative bacteria in a jelly cocoon. While it can't kill the bacteria, the jelly seal is like a fire alarm. Alerting us to the presence of what could become a potentially lethal infection and prevent it from spreading. Each year, the medical industry catches around 600,000 horseshoe crabs. The crabs are drained of 30% of their blood and up to 30% of the crabs don't live through the process. The survivors are returned to the water, but no one really knows how well or if they recover. In 2016, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature bumped the American horseshoe crab up to vulnerable on it's red list, one step below endangered. And the US population could keep falling, by as much as 30% over the next 40 years. LAL Labs claim that the returned crabs eventually recover, but new evidence suggests that's not always the case. Win Watson is trying to figure out what happens to the crabs when they're put back in the sea. Win Watson: So, the most immediate negative effect is mortality. Anywhere from 10% to 25% of the animals will die within the first couple days after bleeding. Narrator: Bled crabs become disoriented and weak for a period of time, and females may have trouble spawning. Watson: If they survive the first – I'll say two weeks, week, two week — and they're back in their natural habitat they did pretty well.  Narrator: But it's getting through those two weeks that's the issue. Watson: You know, based on our data and other's I think that you need to treat them a little — if you're going to get — increase their survival rate, right, you need to treat them better. Narrator: Scientists are trying to find a synthetic alternative to help reduce the strain on the horseshoe crab population. But so far, LAL is still required by the FDA for this type of testing. So if these animals really aren't recovering at the rate companies previously thought, we might eventually run out of crabs to bleed. If that happens, our lives and the lives of countless rabbits, might be at risk.

Business Insider's Will Wei and Graham Flanagan drove a Tesla Model X across the United States. Their goal? To get from San Francisco to New York City in just seven days by relying exclusively on Tesla's nationwide network of Supercharger stations. Watch their seven-day journey as they drive a Tesla across America: http://read.bi/2vFvxfb On the final day of the trip, things get nerve-wracking. Leaving Cleveland, the navigation system said Will and Graham would arrive at the next Supercharger station with only 2% battery power. That estimate quickly downgraded to 1%. This was most certainly caused by poor planning on their part. -------------------------------------------------- Follow BI Video on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1oS68Zs Follow BI on Facebook: http://bit.ly/1W9Lk0n Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ -------------------------------------------------- Business Insider is the fastest growing business news site in the US. Our mission: to tell you all you need to know about the big world around you. The BI Video team focuses on technology, strategy and science with an emphasis on unique storytelling and data that appeals to the next generation of leaders – the digital generation.

How "Jake from State Farm" became such a cultural icon.