WTF, Scientific Papers?

[The following observation proves that the voice of the quagga is very similar to the barking of a dog.

My grandson Peter aged 1 year and 4 months who was with me during the Warsaw Rising in 1944, certainly the smallest citizen able to imitate the voice of a zebra.

When asked: “How does the zebra cry?” he shouted in a funny “a — ha, a — ha, a — ha!”. Once, when we were indoors, we heard the barking of a spaniel in the street. To my astonishment little Peter began immediately to imitate the voice of the quagga. Since the child never had heard the barking of a dog the voice he heard now associated itself in his mind with the well-known notion of a zebra and an immediate reaction followed.

Fig. 3. The voice of the Chapman zebra noted by the author. (From A. RZĄŚNICKI, 1933).]

[Oh deer! Videography reveals a range of defensive behaviors against a cervid by a ground-nesting bird]

[Fig. 1. Two beavers are using different materials.]

[Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside: evidence for vertebrate predation and recovery in the Mississippian blastoid Pentremites spicatus]

[A head of the curve: Bonnethead shark (Sphyrna tiburo) cephalofoil morphology and trophic ecology]

[FIG. 5. Coiling radius R vs. Ed^2/ρg for lugworm feces (blue), pea dough (red), rice noodles (black) and spaghetti (green). Error bars for the data point with the maximum error in R are shown for each of the four materials. The black line is the theoretical prediction R = 0.70(Ed^2/ρg)^(1/3).]

Coiling of lugworm feces reveals universal mechanics for the shape of poo

[You should look a gift ungulate in the mouth: Using 2D occlusal cheek tooth morphology to study the evolution of molarization in ungulates]

[Flipping plankton]

[The elephant (bird) in the room: unknown mechanisms and unresolved impacts of low DNA yields in avian microbiome research]

[The Smoking Penalty: Distributive Justice or Smokism?]

[Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov., a hairy ghost pipefish (Teleostei: Solenostomidae) from the Southwest Pacific, with an integrative comparison to S. paegnius]

[Fig. 1. Reproduction of the woodcut of the Caracara from Marcgrave (1648).]

[It is a virtual caricature of a bird of prey.]

[Overcoming a ‘Clamity’: SWOT Analysis Uncovers Priorities to Improve Giant Clam Conservation in Southeast Asia]

[The Poison Pen: How Confident Are We About Iocane?

Samuel J Stellpflug, Jon B Cole, Eric J Lavonas]

[Please note that the authors of this Poison Pen do not have personal concerns with iocane exposure as we used our heartbroken years on a pirate ship to build up immunity to the poison on the off chance we might be presented down the road with a battle of wits to the death with a Sicilian who has kidnapped our long lost loves.]

[Following a recent trend of scientific studies on artwork, we study here the thermodynamics of a thermometer made of zisha ceramic, related to the Chinese tea culture. The thermometer represents a boy who “urinates” shortly after hot water is poured onto his head. Long jetting distance is said to indicate that the water temperature is hot enough to brew tea. Here, a thermodynamic model describes the jetting phenomenon of that pee-pee boy. The study demonstrates how thermal expansion of an interior air pocket causes jetting. A thermodynamic potential is shown to define maximum jetting velocity. Seven optimization criteria to maximize jetting distance are provided, including two dimensionless numbers. Predicted jetting distances, jet durations, and temperatures agree very well with infrared and optical measurements. Specifically, the study confirms that jetting distances are sensitive enough to measure water temperature in the context of tea brewing. Optimization results show that longer jets are produced by large individuals, with low body mass index, with a boyhood of medium size inclined at an angle π/4. The study ends by considering the possibility that ceramic jetting artifacts like the pee-pee boy might have been the first thermometers known to mankind, before Galileo Galilei’s thermoscope.]