I’m pretty busy this week and have little time to spend writing coherent blog posts. Here are some interesting sciencey links. Kindly construct your own humorous commentary using the material provided. Thanks.
drooling, braindead monsters in search of fresh meat, average Friday out in London, your research is boring in comparison to ethnobiology of zombies
- Miracle fruit makes sour foods taste sweet
- Fruit bats get hangovers, prefer fruit to fry-ups
“It was found that ethanol levels measured in fruit bat breath…”, “after consuming Synsepalum dulcificum, rhubarb tastes like a sugar stick and strawberries taste like candy”, your research is boring in comparison to breathalyzing fruit bats and checking to see if pints of bitter suddenly taste like a milkshake
- Unrealistic optimism is to blame for your credit card debt
- Panda porn encourages pandas to breed
“Before, he might have been clumsy and not known how to approach and react to a female panda. Now he will remember and imitate the video”, got your unrealistic optimism right there.
“Hi… I’m, um, here to, ah, fix your fridge?”
.. also, your research is boring in comparison to filming panda porn
If you like the panda stuff, there’s a whole, hilarious, chapter, aka Faking Organisms on the lengths that conservationists go to to encourage rare animals to mate in the book I published last year Lonesome George, now longlisted for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
The whole thing seems a bit strange (is there even anecdotal evidence to suggest that some animals respond to mucky videos?). My initial attempt to research the subject by typing ‘animal porn’ into Google ended badly – the book looks like a better option.
I like the page previews, very nice.