Between the yin of devoted love and the yang of bestiality lies the curious jumble of human behaviour reported in a monograph called A Case Study of Preferential Bestiality, published two years ago in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Psychologists ML Lalumiere [pictured here], of the University of Lethbridge, Canada, and CM Earls, Montreal University, take us […]
Category: Extra-Improbable columns
Our columns in other publications — The ‘Feedback’ column in New Scientist magazine, beginning in September 2022, and the “Improbable Research”column that ran for 13 years in The Guardian newspaper.
Combining kangaroo care with live harp music
You might think that an Israeli Medical Association report called Combining Kangaroo Care and Live Harp Music Therapy in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Setting is the first medical study of the combined effects, on newborns, of kangaroo care and music therapy. Not so. The invention of kangaroo care (also called kangaroo therapy) is widely attributed to […]
The FBI’s Guide to Hair
Despite its reputation for sporting nearly-identical conservative haircuts, the FBI – the Federal Bureau of Investigation, America’s government gumshoes – assembled and published an all-inclusive guide to hair. And despite its reputation for tight-lippedness, it made its guide available to anyone who might have a use or desire for it. Hair Bibliography for the Forensic […]
Running Speeds of Crippled Coyotes
Running Speeds of Crippled Coyotes introduced itself in 1976, in a journal called Northwest Science. You’ll find few scientific studies that tell their story so clearly and efficiently. Bruce C Thompson, of the department of fisheries and wildlife at Oregon State University, wrote everything he had to say in a plain two pages. It contains little […]