Why are females so promiscuous? This question is so freighted with cultural cooties that the average person can’t even read that sentence without an involuntary reaction of some kind: Shame! Ew! Cool! Biologists have the same problem. It leads them astray. Darwin did his heavy theoretical lifting during the Victorian era, when the human female [...]
Have you noticed that someone who’s depressed tends to wallow in the world’s saddest and grimmest puddles? The sun could be out and the birds singing and they’re going to notice the toad smashed in the road. Personality scientists have long observed that people who rank high on tests of neuroticism — depression, anxiety, self-consciousness, [...]
You turn your car key so you can drive the car. Congratulations! Your behavior is so rare that there’s a term for it: Sequential tool use. It takes insight and flexible thinking. It takes a human. Or a crow. A rook actually. Which is basically a crow — rooks, crows, ravens are all corvids. But [...]
I always thought stress sweat smelled different than sport sweat. When a panel of sweat sniffers was asked to ponder perspiration, they didn’t notice a difference. But their brains did. The Blog has poked its nose into this before, particularly regarding human mating. It’s a cool subject because humans were for EVER considered to be [...]
As if there’s ever good news for the unbeautiful. Humans, like barn swallows, care deeply about the symmetry of other humans. Snip the tip off one of a male swallow’s twin tails, and the girls will all turn up their beaks at him. Same with humans. Looking at unlovely babies. Yep, if you’re born with [...]
It has happened again. Humans have so clutched livestock so closely to our bosom that we’ve caught their cooties. No, not swine flu. This time it’s swine meningitis. The cause is the same: Pig kissing. OK, I exaggerate. But a rash of meningitis cases in Vietnam has been traced back to pigs. You know the [...]
Oooooh, the bloggerista is sleepy this morning — perhaps from 758 days of rain in a row. The blog, too, is plodding. The blog normally appears to be powered by slacker hamsters. Today it’s running as though half the hamsters called in sick. So we’re going to visit some more urban animal goofiness. Cornell U, ornithology [...]
“She got to fling dressing-coated salad all over my desk (searching for the elusive cranberries), while I waited for the flash. The hot sauce didn’t seem to bother her, but I’ve seen much scrubbing of a vinegar-coated raisin on the door mat. Her handsome hubby is somewhat shy (but will eat out of hand), and [...]
If you’re about to meet someone for the first time, what would help you predict your response to them: A quick report from a stranger? Or a list of the person’s favorite books, movies, etc., and a photo? I don’t know how I’d answer that myself, actually. But a group of young women at Harvard [...]
Flowers, with their openings and closings choreographed to the passing Sun, taught us that we, too, have circadian rhythms. The human body, like the sunflower, takes note of the Sun’s position in the sky. At any given hour, you probably have hundreds of hormones and other chemicals surging or waning based on your “body time.” [...]
