Although you might think (as many have) that dogs have a strong preference for eating meat, things may not be quite so clearcut. Authors Anandarup Bhadra and Anindita Bhadra of The Dog Lab (doggedly observing dogs at the Department of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, India), propose instead that dogs’ […]
Tag: Food
Can (or should) Ostriches Eat Horseshoes?
The idea that ostriches are partial to eating horseshoes goes back a long way. Hundreds of years in fact. See this 14th century depiction of a horseshoe (and nail) Struthioniforme mealtime. But can the birds actually eat and digest them? Over the centuries, several experiments have been performed to find out, and some are recounted […]
Banana shape(s) – the math(s)
Have you ever mused upon the question: ‘Is the cross section of a banana an ellipsoid, and if so, can it be used to gauge its volume and surface area? Yes? Then a report in the International Journal of Agricultural Science, Research and Technology (IJASRT) 2011 Vol. 1 No. 1 pp. 1-5, may be of […]
The Acoustics of Breaking Chopsticks
What are the acoustics of breaking a bamboo chopstick? According to a new paper by physicist Tzay-Ming Hong and his colleagues at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, it’s kind of like the acoustics of breaking a bundle spaghetti: they both apparently resemble the Gutenberg–Richter scaling law, which relates earthquake magnitude to the frequency of earthquakes with at […]