An alien officer aboard a galactic cruise ship watches with fascination as one of the ships crew, a human, grabs a wad of some pink stretchy and sticky material from his mouth and places it on the pipe with a small coolant leak in the bowels of the ship.

A: "Human Bob-friend, I did not know your species produced semi-organic material with uses such as ship repair. Truly humans are quite resourceful."

H: <chewing very loudly> "It's called gum."

A: "Gum? Fascinating. I was unaware that your biology produced such a material. That is not in any of the documents or medical files I have read on humans."

H: <still chewing loudly> "No we make it on earth and chew it for fun. There are hundreds of flavours. It's pretty useful in emergency situations. We probably want to actually seal this eventually but it'll hold for now."