The special Big Animals issue (vol. 26, no. 2) of the magazine tramples forth with reports about improbable research about animals that are big. And improbable. And real. Perhaps this is the psychologically right moment to subscribe, or to buy one of the more than 150 back issues that explore all sorts of improbable things.
Tag: animals
Podcast Episode #205: “Color Preferences in the Insane”
Color Preference in the Insane, Can Consumers Recognize the Taste of their Favorite Beer?, Effect of Audience Boredom on the Power Hungry, You Never Sleep Alone, Improbable Medical Review, Extracting the Wrong Tooth, and Telephones for Animals. In episode #206, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to Jean Berko Gleason, Chris Cotsapas, Maggie Lettvin, […]
The mystery of how some animals lock themselves into place
Benno Meyer-Rochow, who won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2005 for calculating the pressures produced when penguins poo [see diagram, below] is now investigating a different kind of biological mystery. Meyer-Rochow wrote an essay that begins: You can lock arms with someone, you can lock on to something or be locked in or even be […]
Should researchers refrain from eating their research subjects? [study]
If you are a researcher studying, say, concrete bridge structures, or microprocessors, then you probably wouldn’t have to be overly concerned about potential criticism from peers regarding the possibility that you might eat your research subjects. But this is not the case for all academic fields. Take for example, ‘Animal Studies’. A 2018 paper published […]