If you could spend 100 years eating no sugar, or spend 80 years eating candy, chocolate and cupcakes, which would it be? It’s that simple for worms, which probably means the same dynamic is at work in us, to some extent. Scientists tested two diets on nematodes (tiny worms). They fed one group a wholesome [...]
Like we didn’t know this: In an environment where females are controlled and restricted, a male’s aggression works well to improve his rate of impregnating females. But in a region where females are free to come and go as they like, male aggression doesn’t work. Free the female water striders! One of biology’s great mistakes [...]
Funny how a certain food develops a reputation. Especially odd when that reputation is founded on… nothing. Like, grapefruit makes you lose weight. Like oysters make you, you know. And turkey makes you sleepy. I began to wonder about the turkey thing while researching this current book on the biology of personality. I read that [...]
Starving, already famous for greatly prolonging life in mice, now shows potential as a barrier to colorectal cancer. But as much as you don’t want colorectal cancer, consider carefully. The alternative may involve eating tulip bulbs. The Dutch people faced an intense period of starvation in the “Hunger Winter” of 1944. The Allied Forces’ route [...]
Humans don’t do well with ugliness. Just watch a child who encounters a strange face on his fellow man. Most adults can control our reactions, but a truly deformed human face nonetheless sends our empathy plummeting into the Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley is a bad place. The term was coined by a roboticist in [...]
Well, how do you eat them? I understand there are people out there who just grab a handful, put them in their mouth, and chew. Zounds! Really? No arranging by color? No arranging by number? No pairing and dividing? You just… eat them? I’m writing a book about the biology of personality, and today I [...]
What happened to the giant mammoths, camels, and sloths that roamed North America only 14,000 years ago? I mean, dang! Don’t you wish we still had giant sloths and camels? What happened to them? Climate change? Meteor impact? People ate them one by one? It’s been a much-haggled-over question ever since people discovered the bones [...]
One good thing about the early darkness this time of year: more time to locate Castor and Pollux. I know that’s a confusing sentence for those who know Castor as the genus name of a beaver, or who don’t know what the heck is a Pollux. But if you can find the two buggers you [...]
In our humanny world we forget that there’s more than one way to sleep. We feel pity for the shark, who must eternally swim. We ache for the humble dustmite who has no head and hence no dreams. And the elephant seal, who spends months on end out at sea… Someone recently applied little [...]
Your intestine is like a birdfeeder. You mean to feed only the goldfinches and the cardinals. But you bought the cheap food mix, and now you’ve attracted possums, skunks, and turkeys. And they’re making a mess of your gut. Here is a freaky insight to obesity. The sudden swelling of the human girth is alarming, [...]
