6 Strange Studies and Experiments Conducted by Serious Scientists

1. Studying the flight range of penguin feces

What would motivate you to go to Antarctica? Adventure and romance? But the German ornithologist Victor Meyer-Rochov and the Hungarian Jozsef Gal organized an expedition there to definehow far penguins throw their feces.

Nature has equipped this bird with a backside that can literally shoot liquid excrement. For such tricks penguins create the muscles of their cloaca have a pressure of 600 g / cm³ - three times more than people. This is to prevent feces on their own eggs in the nest.

As a result of long measurements, ornithologists came to the conclusion that the average penguin, 60 cm tall, shoots feces at a distance of up to 40 cm. Live now with this information.

2. Experiments with leeches and alcohol

There is such a bearded anecdote: to get rid of mosquitoes, rub yourself with vodka and sprinkle gravel on your skin. Mosquitoes will get drunk, start throwing stones and kill each other. Norwegian scientists Anders Berheim and Hogne Sandvik from the University of Bergen provedwhat with leeches, at least it might work.

They dipped these creatures in ale and tested how effectively they would then stick to the skin. It turned out that leeches after beer baths generally stop drinking blood. But after immersion in sour cream, on the contrary, they begin to show a brutal appetite.

The garlic sauce just killed the worms. So don't know if it will help. garlic from a cold, but from leeches - completely. Use this information and stay healthy.

3. Teaching turtles to yawn

Anna Wilkinson from Lincoln University in the UK is an ornithologist by profession. But in his free time, he likes to study reptiles and perform various experiments on his domestic red-footed tortoise named Moses.

For example, Wilkinson discoveredthat after some training, an animal can go through mazes faster than mice do. In addition, the researcher found that turtles are capable of so-called social learning: when she used a laser pointer to make Moses look at the right point, other turtles also directed there sight.

Previously, it was believed that reptiles are not capable of paying attention to the behavior of individuals of their species.

Inspired by the results of the experiments, Anna decided to determine whether turtles are capable of empathy. The sign was chosen as the simplest - yawning. Man and many other animals yawn when they see others doing it. This testifies about developed empathy. If a creature is able to yawn after those around it, then it can also sympathize with them.

Anna Wilkinson spent six months to train Moses to yawn on command. Unfortunately, the other turtles, watching his progress, were in no hurry to repeat it after him. Perhaps they still have some kind of empathy, but animals show it very weakly.

However, in science, a negative result is also a result, and Wilkinson for his article "Lack of evidence for contagious yawning in red-footed turtles" in Current Zoology received Ig Nobel Prize.

4. Syrup swimming experiment

In 2004, researchers at the University of Minnesota decided to test whether it was difficult to swim in a syrup twice as thick as water. For what? Yes, because it's fun.

Edward Cussler, the leader of the experiment, and his student, Brian Gettelfinger, who is also a professional swimmer, took the matter seriously. They added in a 25-meter pool 300 kg of guar gum, an edible thickener that is used in the preparation of sauces, ice cream and yogurt. As a result, the water turned into syrup, and 16 volunteers took a swim in this substance.

It turned out that there are practically no differences between the efforts expended when moving in water and syrup.

Despite the seeming stupidity, the experiment was actually useful from the point of view of fundamental physics. Isaac Newton and his contemporary Christian Huygens argued on this topic back in the 17th century. The first believed that the speed of an object in a liquid would depend on its viscosity, while the second denied the relationship. Eventually Newton included both versions in his Principia Mathematica without deciding which was true.

Demonstration of Cussler showedthat Huygens was right. At the very least, his statement is true for human-sized objects, because humans have a fairly narrow body that effectively cuts through liquid. If we were wider, the syrup would have more resistance and it would be extremely difficult to swim in it.

5. Studying the gait of a chicken with a plunger on the pope

To simulate the gait of various types dinosaurs, are used complex computer programs that calculate the animal's weight, movement speed, foot pressure on the ground and many other indicators.

Researchers at the University of Chile and the University of Chicago decided to skip the technological complexities and got roughly the same results. With Velcro, they hitched to the rear of the chicken a device that imitates the tail. It looked like a plunger.

The weight of this thing reached 15% of the bird's body weight - namely, this ratio of tail and body masses was in adult theropods, including the famous tyrannosaurus rex. Then the chickens were sent out for a walk, recording them on a slow-motion camera.

The experiment confirmed what paleontologists had previously guessed, judging by the behavior of the distant relatives of the tyrannosaurus rex - chickens, as well as the structure of the bones of its legs and hips.

The mighty dinosaur walked like a chicken with a plunger attached to its back, dangling from side to side.

And it makes sense, because from the point of view evolution birds are dinosaur survivors. They are even scientifically called archosaurs. So a pigeon defecating on your windowsill is like a Jurassic Park monster, just not as big. Imagine what this archosaur would do if it were 8 meters long and weighed as much as a couple of elephants!

6. Studying the smell of popcorn coming from cat bears

In Southeast Asia, on the territory from India to the Philippines, there lives a funny creation of a binturong, sometimes called a "cat bear". This is a peaceful clumsy animal that eats mainly fruits, but also does not refuse fish, carrion, insects, robs nests and hunts birds.

And he has one feature that has remained for a long time a mystery to science: animal distributes there is a persistent smell of popcorn around you, evoking an association with a cinema. The employees of the wildlife sanctuary in North Carolina decided to look into this and investigated the binturong in more detail. Before them, no one, apparently, asked such a question - well, it smells and smells.

Eventually It revealedthat this smell communicates to animals the same chemical compound that is contained in corn - it is called 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline. It is because of him that popcorn gets its usual appetizing aroma. And this substance is one of the components of cat urine. bears. Hence the smell.