Yes, shocking as it might be to some, a lot of songs, classical, pop, or of any other genre...talk a lot about sex. But not just sex, there are a lot of reproductive messages in music. We might notice a lot of these lyrics, from Baby Got Back to Gilbert and Sullivan, but what do they mean? Why are they there? And do they make a song more popular?
SCIENCE is here to find out!
Hobbes and Gallup. "Songs as a Medium for Embedded Reproductive Messages" Evolutionary Psychology, 2011.
Note 1: Today's post comes courtesy of the Digital Cuttlefish, who turned me on to this truly awesome piece of the scientific literature.
Note 2: I would like to dedicate this post as a whole to the fantastic Danielle Lee, who I hope will remix it.
It's time to talk about bears again, my friends. We have already learned that, contrary to popular belief, they cannot smell the menstruation (or rather, they probably can, but don't care):
But there is another, more difficult question to answer: are bears safe!??!
At first you might be thinking "um, no, they are BEARS. Bears, like sharks and electric fences and parachuteless skydiving, are on the list of things labeled 'not safe'".
Well, sure, but we've got to test it with SCIENCE! And this means we need to get a bunch of people and ask them to walk right up to a bunch of bears. For science.
I don't know about you, but sometimes, when I hear about all of the scary STDs there are in the world, and all the ways you can get them, I think, you know, I should switch to...FEET.
Ah, beautiful feet. Gorgeous sexy feet. Nothing looks better or cleaner when faced with the specter of gonorrhea than feet.
Now, you might be thinking, what is she going on about? Who the heck would make a connection between STDs and foot fetish?
While Sci recovers from the Experimental Biology meeting, I invite you to enjoy this storify, taken as Pascale and I enjoyed an American Physiological Association presentation on...taints. That's right. 'Taint balls, 'Taint anus, it's the area in between. And there are some new and interesting findings in the taint world, not to mention all the hilarity!
Today's post is a synchro-blogging effort! I'm teaming up with Dr. Zen to talk about the latest in the evolutionary psychology theory of everything. The idea that when we do something, it must be because that behavior has an evolutionary basis. Girls like pink because it makes sense to spot redder berries. Boys are better at math because hunting required linear algebra. And everyone knows that a lady wears red because she wants to get some ACTION.
Or does she?
(Not dressin' up for women with heart disease! No siree! Source)
Elliot and Pazda. "Dressed for Sex: Red as a Female Sexual Signal in Humans" PLoS ONE, 2012. Continue Reading »
Everyone knows that beans make you fart. It's something that's basically assumed to be a fact of life. Beans have high fiber, high fiber does things to your intestinal tract, and the net result is a chorus of flatulence and stink that makes you unfit company. I know many people who won't touch beans on a first date, for fear of the farts. So we think beans must cause farting...but is it TRUE?
Or, as Stephanie noted "Penguins shooting the s**t".
Today's weird science comes to you courtesy of Anne Jefferson of Highly Allocthonous, who pointed Sci to this paper purely for the amazingness that is Figure 1. And it IS amazing.
After all, what do you get when you combine penguins and poo? SCIENCE of course!
Meyer-Rochow and Gal. "Pressures produced when penguins pooh—calculations on avian defaecation" Polar Biology, 2003.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that people dislike peeing next to each other.
Ok, maybe it's just a Western thing. Or an American thing. Or a thing for people with large senses of personal space. But no matter what, there is a little dance you do when you go into a multi-stall bathroom. You casually glance (no bending over to check, that's rude) to see if other stalls are occupied, and if so, how many. If no other stalls are occupied, you pick your favorite stall, maybe because it's the one that always has toilet paper, maybe it's the one with a slower automatic flush, maybe it's got interesting graffiti. Do your thing, come out and all is well (please don't forget to wash your hands!).
However, what if other stalls are occupied? Then, quick math takes over. You need to pick the stall that is the furthest from other people's pooping. Sometimes this is easy and you can pick a stall two over, with a single stall barrier in between you and your peeing partner. Sometimes it's harder. Of course when it reaches maximum capacity you just take whichever one is free, but that mid-capacity occupation is a delicate balance.
And it's about this time that you begin to wonder...what is the POINT of all this. Most bathrooms are tile, so it's not like whatever sounds you make will be muffled in any particular stall. Unless you are master of the silent pee, someone will know you're peeing. And...why does that even MATTER? You're in the BATHROOM!! What else would you be doing?! (Don't answer that...).
And of course, I'm a GIRL. Apparently this problem is magnified for men. I have been informed via Twitter that it's more than just an issue of homophobia or space...
So there you have it. Homophobia, personal space, and "splashback". Yep. Suffice it to say the Twitter hilarity continued, but we've got science to get to.
Anyway, it turns out that men will go to great lengths in partially occupied restrooms to make sure there is adequate urinal spacing between peeing patrons. They will do this SO carefully...that some guys wrote a paper about it. With algorithms and models.
With many of my Friday Weird Science posts, it starts with a random thought. I like to think that most people have thoughts like this and just don't tell polite society, thoughts like "Do people all have a favorite bathroom stall at work or is it just me? Did dinosaurs have penises? What did they look like? Why do some women claim sexual pleasure from working out at the gym? How does that work?"
Please tell me other people have these thoughts. If not...I think I'm much more alone on this planet than I thought.
Anyway, today's post started with the following thought:
Quoth Sci to Mr. S: Did you ever notice that you need to fart less when you're in public? Mr. S: What... Sci: No really! Is there such a thing as social inhibition of flatulence? Do people generally fart more alone?
Finding that Mr. S had no scientific data to offer on this point, I took to the Twitters, which is where many of my random thoughts end up. I would make a storify of what resulted for your amusement, but unfortunately Storify only goes back so far. Suffice it to say that I scoured the internet looking for someone, ANYONE, who had studied farts. It turns out that 1870 people on Pubmed have published on flatulence, but none of them had really looked at the PSYCHOLOGY of the fart. I was in despair, until Jason at The Thoughtful Animal found me a citation. Lippman, 1980. I searched some more, but no one seemed to have the paper. Finally he and I tracked down the elusive Lippman, who is on the Editorial Board of the Annals of Improbable Research. Given that his 1980 paper was titled "Toward a social psychology of flatulence: the interpersonal regulation of natural gas", I figured this was the right guy.
I was right. Email contact established, Dr. Lippman was kind enough not only to snail mail me the hard copy of the paper (which I will, I promise, scan and produce in PDF for posterity), he also was kind enough to answer many of my questions. Questions like "Did you REALLY do a FART STUDY?!?!?!"
Lippman, LG. "Toward a social psychology of flatulence: The interpersonal regulation of natural gas". Psychology: a Quarterly Journal of Human Behavior, 1980.
As Friday was winding down, the awesome Michelle Banks (make sure to check out her brain art! I've got one in my office and get loads of compliments!) and I got to tweeting about my recent alligator penis post. And well...an EPIC PENIS POETRY SLAM was had! Michelle was kind enough to Storify the results. Read and LOL!
