While liver is often eaten, the vitamin A content of the liver of certain animals—including the polar bear, seal,[12] walrus,[13] moose,[14] and husky—is highly hazardous.
This danger has long been known to the Inuit and has been recognized by Europeans since at least 1597 when Gerrit de Veer wrote in his diary that, while taking refuge in the winter in Nova Zemlya, he and his men became severely ill after eating polar bear liver.[15] In 1913, Antarctic explorers Douglas Mawson and Xavier Mertz were both poisoned (and Mertz died) from eating the livers of their sled dogs during the Far Eas…