What costs roughly $49 million per gallon and is part of the horse racing industry? It's totally legal and quite possibly the world's most expensive liquid.
The answer is a simple one: it's horse semen. Granted it's not just semen from any stallion, it's the semen from the world's most expensive stallion -- thoroughbred stud Galileo.
While there aren't any gallons of horse semen for sale to actually document this claim, Business Insider recently did some math with some extrapolations based on solid evidence. In Ireland, where Galileo stands stud, mares can only be bred by natural cover unlike in North America's Standardbred industry where artificial insemination is a more common practice.
"Assuming that during the course of a natural covering, Galileo ejaculates the average of 50mL of semen, and assuming that the semen is high-enough quality to impregnate a mare successfully, and assuming that a breeder paid $650,000 for that service, then we can deduce that a gallon of Galileo's semen could be worth a whopping $49 million, making it the most expensive liquid on earth," stated Business Insider's Andy Ash.
On a per-gallon basis, that tops high-priced liquids the likes of scorpion venom ($39 million), king cobra venom ($150,000) and LSD ($123,000).
The video feature on the world's most expensive liquid from Business Insider is available below.