The weirdest studies
From time to time, science also knows how to be… peculiar.
If it wasn’t for scientific progress, we would not be where we are: there would be no computers, the average life expectancy would still be in the mid-30s and would know little or nothing about all that surrounds us, inside and outside of our planet. However, some scientific studies break the odd barrier. We chose a few examples.
Recognition between… goats
The Babraham Institute, in the UK, tested in 2001 the hypothesis that goats can recognize snouts of other goats. The result? It seems that 80% of these animals not only can observe their peers but also remember them until two years after they first met.
Woman in red, femme fatale?
In a study conducted at the University of Rochester in New York, United States, dozens of men were submitted to the presence of a woman in red, and then a question was asked: how they would spend $100 with this woman? Later, the same question and the same woman were placed before men, but now wearing a different color. All responses showed that red arouses more physical attraction and sexual desire.
Curiosity saved the rat, instead of killing the cat
Yes, scientist tried to make mice understand human language. It happened at the University of Barcelona: a team of scientists subjected mice to human voices speaking in Dutch and Japanese, then checking if their behavior was related with the languages heard. The astonishment was general when it was realized that, in fact, rats identified the sounds of each of these languages.
Don’t be afraid to try
During the 30s, little was known about poisonous spiders, so a professor of bacteriology at the University of Alabama in the United States, Allan Walker Blair, thought it would be a good idea to let himself be bitten by a black widow. In the report, he says he felt “excruciating pain”. He got away from the dead, through the experience, but it is suspected that the heart attack that killed him ten years later had something do with the arachnid bite.
How is it to live lied down?
In 1986, eleven Russian men lived on a bed, always lying, for 370 days, to understand what would be the effect of passing this time, in that position, on outer space. The only discover was that spending so much time on the horizontal creates an illusion of not having weight.
