Even if you’ve never lived with a cat, you can still be subject to their powers of mammalian mind-control. “The Cry Embedded Within the Purr,” Karen McComb, Anna M. Taylor, Christian Wilson, and Benjamin D. Charlton, Current Biology, 19 (13), July 2009, pp. R507-8. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.05.033. The authors, from The Centre for Mammal Vocal Communication and Cognition […]
Tag: communication
Dead ducks and pubic lice at the TED talks
Today in Rotterdam, Improbable Research European Bureau Chief (and Ig Nobel Prize winner) Kees Moeliker discussed (while battling a head cold) his research on homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck, the decline of pubic lice, and other remarkable animal behavior. This was at TEDxRotterdam. Here’s video of the talk:
On the Impoliteness of Trolls
A new study tries to sharpen our understanding of the highly verbal parasites known as trolls. Trolls – call them internet trolls, if you like – are in some ways quite similar to Plasmodium falciparum, a protozoan parasite that causes malaria in large numbers of human beings. Both kinds of parasite are maddeningly difficult to suppress. They […]
Beauty in the Gonads
Beauty — the concept and the experience — fascinates some researchers: “Beauty: In the Gonads of the Beholder — and the Beheld,” Peter T. Ellison, Hormones and Behavior, vol. 53, no. 1, January 2008, Pages 11-3. (Thanks to Amy Brand for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at Harvard University, explains in the final […]