There's no such thing as a fake feather [video]
9 comments
·December 18, 2025exasperaited
jaggederest
Well, ficus (ficus elastica and others) are natural latex - their sap is one of the forms of latex that occurs naturally and used to be harvested, but these days latex is harvested from a different plant (hevea brasiliensis, the "rubber tree")
So it's not so much as "the latex ones are cheaper" as "the real leaves are already made of latex, so why artificially make one out of latex?"
exasperaited
Ficus produces natural latex. The entire plant or leaf isn't latex!
What is left from this process in the fake leaf is a mixture of latex sap and processed lignin, I think. It's certainly not only latex.
immibis
That explains why the fake rubber moss I bought has an odd smell and the occasional bit of what seems like a real decayed leaf. Definitely feels like rubber, but if you're saying they took some real moss and chemically converted it to rubber-like material, that makes sense.
exasperaited
Seems possible. A bit of a google suggests that the process in that case would involve glycerin to replace the water content. So it could be that.
hnbad
Given the incredible number of chickens that are processed every single minute across the world, this shouldn't be surprising but it's easy to see why you might be surprised if you never considered where all the stuff that isn't meat goes.
hennell
I found it pretty surprising. It would not have surprised me at all if we made fake plastic feathers and burned or buried even more real ones because it works out fractionally 'cheaper' to make new then collect and wash/treat the old.
tobyjsullivan
Honestly, I’d still be surprised to learn feathers in America are produced from American poultry. Far more likely the local ones get burned and everything for sale is shipped across the ocean because cheaper.
asdfsadffdasd
I didn't like the video because it uses cutesy language and style to gloss over the slaughter of the chickens.
Indeed. Also very nearly always true with "fake" skeleton leaves used for crafting.
A small percentage (usually enlarged designs of particular shapes) are made with sophisticated latex presses, but most are chemically-stripped and treated real leaves (Ficus and suchlike) because it's simply easier to make them in bulk.
I was amazed by this at first — I bought some for a photography project simply assuming that their flexible, slightly springy nature meant they were artifically-made latex. But no: ficus leaves automatically processed in baking soda, essentially. The latex ones aren't even cheaper.