Some mysteries evade us because there’s no obvious answer. Some because we accept an obvious answer too readily.
So when a recent Emory University graduate stumbled across America and into the Alaskan wilderness alone, with few resources or skills as an outdoorsman, and his body was found wasting away, the answer seemed obvious.
It wasn’t.
Today’s Moment of Science… The cause of death of Alexander Supertramp.
Chris McCandless graduated from college in 1990 and, after growing up in an abusive home, decided it was time to get the fuck away. But he didn’t go for a summer backpack across Europe to find himself. He wanted Earth to swallow him whole. He gave away his life savings, working odd jobs to make ends meet. He traveled across America by rail and hitchhiking, making community with vagabonds and rebranding as Alexander Supertramp. He obsessed over a book of edible wild plants, steadfast it held the knowledge that could keep him fed off the land.
Stick a pin in that last point.
Whether it was because of or in spite of the danger, he hungered for one last frontier: Alaska. His final postcard to a friend ended with, “I now walk into the wild.”
He traveled with very little, not even a map. He survived for about 110 days, and his body was found weeks later, weighing just 67lbs, curled up in his childhood sleeping bag.
Case closed, he starved to death, right?
Hmm.
Sometimes things are more complicated than they first appear. He was suspected to be 83lbs when he died, so starvation would be a reasonable conclusion. But this is where the story stops being about Chris McCandless and starts being about Jon Krakauer.
Krakauer wrote the book Into the Wild, chronicling the story of Alexander Supertramp’s adventure. Through reading McCandless’ writings and interviewing people who knew him, a more complete story of the young traveler took shape. McCandless left behind journals detailing his days, including what he’d killed and eaten. There’s an easy argument to be made that he kvetched a lot about being hungry, so maybe it was the starvation.
There’s also an argument to be made that this guy killed a moose and let most of it rot due to his own ineptitude, so, maybe this was always a doomed little idea.
Pressing on, towards the end of his life hedysarum alpinum, aka wild potato seeds, comprised an outsized amount of his diet. A note in his journal commented “extremely weak. fault of pot[ato] seed.”
This led Krakauer to a few theories. The first was that a compound in the seeds known as swainsonine could shut down metabolism of glycoproteins, causing starvation even if he was getting sufficient calories. Which sounded like an amazing revelation at first; this young man in the wilderness was actually good at what he did and nature is a mother.
The major whoopsy on that? No fucking swainsonine in the plants.
Theory the second was that another compound, beta-N-oxalyl-L-alpha-beta diaminopropionic acid, abbreviated ODAP, was the culprit. This briefly had legs, as an analysis of the wild potato seeds initially seemed to reveal the presence of the molecule. But, as is so often the case in chemistry, confirmatory testing giveth and taketh. There was a molecule in the plant with the same mass as ODAP, but it was not ODAP.
Look though, Jon Krakauer didn’t write a book, film a documentary, and attempt to think up two non-starvation causes of death for this guy to stop here. He was going to torture the wild potato seed until it talked.
Then there it was. A toxic alkaloid with the same mass as ODAP called L-canavanine, and it happened to make up 1.2% of the mass of the wild potato seeds. L-canavanine interferes with the metabolism of certain amino acids and can cause a lupus-like disease in animals and humans. Given the reports of poisoning in humans and animals, and that McCandless was already nutrient deficient? It’s likely that McCandless was right when he wrote that it was the fault of the potato seeds.
Krakauer and the team of scientists he worked with to identify L-canavanine published their findings in a paper entitled Presence of L-canavanine in Hedysarum alpinum seeds and its potential role in the death of Chris McCandless.
Is it possible that Alexander Supertramp starved to death? Yes, but I’ll pass on sampling the wild potato seeds at your next dinner party.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, asking that if you decide to fuck off into the wilderness, bring a fucking map.
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