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Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Let's start out with something particularly morbid (though potentially the best lede ever): "What effect do thoughts of death have on a typical person's desire for sex?" This fascinating post by Christian Jarrett of BPS Research Digest asks, when is death an aphrodisiac?
If death is an aphrodisiac, then tons of sex should be occurring in Pittsburgh right now, since When Your Super Bowl Team Goes Down, Your Death Risk Goes Up. David Berreby of Mind Matters explains.
I'm not sure why death is such a prominent theme this week, but this incredibly poignant post by Eric M. Johnson of The Primate Diaries (In Exile) is a must-read. He writes about a recent study in which researchers "documented a case where a chimpanzee mother faced what for most of us would be an unthinkable horror: the death of her child," and describes a potential non-human primate model for mourning.