For sale: Used condoms made from fish swim bladders

Think of this as an anti-unicorn chaser for the cute baby animals.

This set of 110-year-old condoms, made from the swim bladders* of fish, are up for auction in Vienna. Delightfully, they seem to have been meant to be reusable, as evidenced by the former owner's careful tally of how many times each condom had been used. It looks as though you were only supposed to reuse 10 times.

*Not a "bladder" like what fills up with urine, but, rather, a gas-filled internal balloon that helps fish control their own buoyancy. The other bladder usually is much less condom-shaped.

Via Dinosaurs and Robots, with assistance from hectocotyli.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

MORE: Culture • History

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

PaulR

Um, would it be improper to say that I’ve actually “used” some?

Y’know, as an ingredient in fish maw soup?
Noodle

It looks like one of those condoms was used 3 and a half times..
kc0bbq

There were a lot of reusable condoms back in the day. There was more to using them than slapping them on. You had to soak them before use. They were pretty much all reusable.

Condom history is strangely interesting.
Hagrid

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
ronnie80

This brand looks like it would be much better than fish condoms, being more about rabbits as they are! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbrBJiqJ7T0 Hahaha

I want to give them a try but they ship from all the way over in Australia :(
Anonymous

I guess when done, you turn them inside out and shake the F@#$ out of them…
Coxswain

And here all my fantasy reading had led me to believe condoms were usually sheep gut.
TooGoodToCheck

not really an anti-unicorn chaser for me. I actually feel very vaguely pleased to think of people in the (relatively) distant past having (relatively) safe sex.

I get both the good feelings of knowing that technology has gotten better, yet also the reassuring non-futureshock feeling that some aspects of life have not changed to the point of unrecognizability in the last 100 years.
Donald Petersen

More than one way to keep your phallus green…
TEKNA2007

Man, I’ve been desperate, but never *that* desperate!

To win an auction, I mean.
Anonymous

They probably stink like fish.
- knoxblox
  
  Well, at least she’s glad not to be the one to blame…
AmandaChapman

A brief history of the condom: http://aidscalgary.blogspot.com/2010/06/history-of-condom.html

(didn’t know about the handy fish bladder when putting it together!)
dculberson

Further proof that there never were any “good old days.”
Anonymous

Wonder what fish used for contraception.
Arabella

I suppose I just wonder how he kept tally of them considering that they all looked the same… I mean… it seems you can distinguish used ones from non-used… but why not use one till it’s no longer usable and then move on? Unless each one was for a separate partner, though somehow I doubt that vigilance on his behalf.
RHK

Recyclable, natural, biodegradable – and if it winds up back in the ocean, it belongs there anyways. I like.
dagfooyo

An anti-unicorn chaser, huh? Next up: A banana tells us to look at Cory.
Anonymous

How about a touch of irony? Why don’t we see if we can find some DNA on these condoms? If we find some, we can clone it. Then this would be the first time a condom caused a pregnancy!
RufusTheGreat

Yet another reason to be thankful for latex and modern chemistry.
civvie

I’d buy them. I never found fish flavoured condoms convincing.