“The story starts with a great deal of drool,” Dr. Stephanie Olson said in a viral Twitter thread on Sunday.
The assistant teacher in Purdue University’s Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Science observed something odd on her Saint Bernard’s fur. Olive’s neck had actually turned green over night!
As an “early Earth geochemist,” Dr. Olson was intent on unearthing the cause of the color (pun meant).
It’s clear that Saint Bernards drool. However after Olive had surgical treatment and was sentenced to the cone of pity, all that slobber collected around her collar.
” Dog saliva consists of iron porphyrins,” Olson described in a subsequent tweet. This is why Olive and numerous other drooly canines have rusty red staining by their mouths.”
There’s a factor Olive’s neck turned green rather of the red we see so typically on doggie eyes and mouths. According to Olson, this chain reaction turned into the best storm when Olive set to rest (as tired puppies do), isolating her slobber underneath her neck folds. The absence of oxygen prevented red staining and instead caused green rust to form.
The outcome was an odd ombré result, with Olive’s muzzle keeping red stains and mixing into the pale green rust matted in her neck fur.
Paradoxically enough, Olive derives from olivine, an infamously green mineral with a beautiful emerald color. Olson jokes that perhaps her pup is just honoring her name.
As an astrobiologist with an unique interest in Earth’s evolution, Olson of course had to connect her puppy’s phenomenon to the world around us. She described that green rust is uncommon today due to the fact that of the presence of oxygen, however our planet’s conditions were various in the past.
” … it may have prevailed on the ancient Earth before our atmosphere ended up being oxygenated,” Olson stated. “The ocean might have even appeared green instead of blue 2.5 billion years earlier!”
Though Olson isn’t sure how to eliminate the rust from Olive’s neck, she ended her cute exposé with a call to fellow geochemists for possible options. If she can’t remove it, at least Olive will have quite the hallmark appearance!
