Fascinating Science Thread

CharminTide

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Oct 23, 2005
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Researchers [at Georgia Institute of Technology] have now squeezed out a mathematical model of the hydrodynamics of pooping. And they’ve estimated that all mammals, big or small, void their bowels in 12 seconds, plus or minus seven seconds. Their findings were published this week in the aptly titled journal Soft Matter.
Link

Actual graph from an actual paper, relating the mass of the mammal along the x-axis and defecation time on the y-axis:



One piece of criticism is the inclusion criteria for this study. Only 23 mammals were examined, often done in absentia by video recording gathered from online sources. Animal defecation metrics were largely collected from controlled settings such as zoos or dog parks, and confounding variables such as diet or bowel illness were not considered. The methodology also doesn't explicitly define the starting and ending points for defecation timing, as the duration of a squat does not necessarily reflect the duration of the defecation event. More study is warranted.
 

CharminTide

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Oct 23, 2005
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I have no idea who funded this project. But looking at the design, if any grant money was required (and none may have been), it would have been a negligible amount. This same group has previously won an Ig Nobel Prize for calculating the average duration of mammal urination, so this seems familiar territory for these researchers.

What is an Ig Nobel Prize, you may wonder? I'm glad you asked! It's a annual parody award given to research that, while interesting, seems to answer a question no sane person would ever ask. Here are last year's winners:

Medicine: This one's a bit weird. A group from the University of Luebeck figured out that, if you put someone with an itch in front of a mirror and have them scratch the wrong side of their body, the itch still goes away. The brain is a strange place.
Reproduction: This is the first time I've seen a posthumous Ig Nobel, going to Ahmed Shafik. For reasons that were probably clear to Shafik, he dressed male rats in pants made from various fabrics, including polyester and wool, and then checked how often they mated. "The electrostatic potentials generated on penis and scrotum were also measured," according to his abstract. The conclusion: natural fibers are better for randy rats. He followed up on that by putting human testicles in a polyester sling, again checking "electrostatic potentials generated by friction between the polyester suspensor and the scrotal skin." Apparently, the sling made for an effective contraceptive, possibly by raising testicular temperatures (as measured by the "rectal-testicular temperature difference," naturally).
Perception: This study asked a simple question: do things appear to be the same size when you bend over and look at them between your legs? The answer is no, as determined by a carefully controlled study in which some subjects wore goggles that inverted their vision in order to make it appear like they were bent over. Their conclusion is that body orientation influences visual perception. Why they chose to ask this in the first place...
Biology: This one goes to a pair of books, so I'll quote the citation:

"Awarded jointly to: Charles Foster, for living in the wild as, at different times, a badger, an otter, a deer, a fox, and a bird; and to Thomas Thwaites, for creating prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move in the manner of, and spend time roaming hills in the company of, goats."

The museum in Rotterdam that now hosts the goat suit generously allowed it to make an appearance at the awards ceremony.
Physics: That's physics with a strong dose of biology, with two different teams of researchers being recognized. Both studies involved the perception of polarized light. In one, a bunch of Hungarians figured out that the local dragonflies couldn't tell the difference between a polished black tombstone and a small body of water, and so they tended to congregate in a cemetery. The other team showed that white horses have an advantage, despite being easier for predators to spot and suffering from higher rates of cancer due to their inability to reflect UV light. It turns out that a parasite-carrying fly homes in on prey using polarized light reflected off white coats, and it simply can't see white horses as easily.
Psychology: For a variety of things, humanity exhibits what's called an inverted U-shaped curve. We're terrible at them as kids, quickly rise to proficiency and stay there well into adulthood, and then decline again with age. This applies to everything from our analytical abilities to our athletic skills. The Psychology award recognized a team of researchers that added another thing to the list: lying. Extra credit to the authors for using visitors to a science museum to do the testing.
 

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