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Editor's Selections: Nutrition, Pheromones, and Toe-Wiggling

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.

  • Imagine you are alone on a desert island for one year and you can have water and one other food - and you have to choose on the basis of health (rather than, say, what you like). What you choose, for example, alfalfa sprouts or hot dogs? The "right" answer might surprise you. Find out as Psych Your Mind discusses the psychology of nutrition.

  • "A male fruit fly displays a scripted set of actions when courting a female," writes Elizabeth Preston at the Inkfish blog, "beginning with a buzzy sort of love song and ending with the deposition of his extraordinarily long sperm." Oh, and for this experiment, the female flies were frozen to death or decapitated. Who Needs Pheromones When You've Got A Rotten Banana?

  • At Oscillatory Thoughts, neuroscientist Bradley Voytek has a question for you: can you wiggle just one of your toes? (The correct answer is: no. Find out why.)

Jason G. Goldman is a science journalist based in Los Angeles. He has written about animal behavior, wildlife biology, conservation, and ecology for Scientific American, Los Angeles magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC, Conservation magazine, and elsewhere. He contributes to Scientific American's "60-Second Science" podcast, and is co-editor of Science Blogging: The Essential Guide (Yale University Press). He enjoys sharing his wildlife knowledge on television and on the radio, and often speaks to the public about wildlife and science communication.

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