Fish farts, Russian submarines, the Swedish Foreign Minister

Maggie Koerth-Baker of Boing-Boing interviewed several journalists at the AAAS Annual Meeting last week in Vancouver, about what they had learned at the meeting. Here’s me, blabbing on about a new little chapter in the story of how fish farts almost caused a diplomatic crisis between Russia and Sweden, and might cause a new little kerfuffle […]

Thursday: Whales & herring farts in Copenhagen

A special event in Copenhagen on Thursday, October 13, 7:00-9:00 pm, HCØ (Auditorium 4), Universitetsparken 5, 2100 København Ø: Magnus Wahlberg, Ig Nobel Prize winner, Improbable Research’s Scandinavian Desk Chief, and Head of Research and Outreach, Adjunct Professor at Fjord & Bælt and University of Southern Denmark, will talk about whales and dolphins, which he is currently […]

A brief history of naked Russians swimming for science

Russian science has a tradition of observing naked swimmers. Several years ago we documented Yuri Glebovich Aleyev’s project (which he documented in a book called Nekton). He used an electric winch to tow naked women under water at speeds of two to four metres per second, to better understand how dolphins interact with water. (His logic may […]

Ichthyology’s most salacious study

Is this ichthyology’s most salacious study? “Female mouthbrooders in control of pre- and postmating sexual selection,” Marcel P. Haesler, Charlotte M. Lindeyer, Oliver Otti, Danielle Bonfils, Dik Heg and Michael Taborsky, Behavioral Ecology, epub June 14, 2011. (Thanks to investigator Charles Oppenheim for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at various institutions in Switzerland, […]