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Season of Love (latest radio contest)
7 years ago
General
The Season of Love Radio Show 2/27/19
1 When I’m not with the frog I love, I love the frog I’m with.
Tungara frogs, of Central and South America, call and mate at night. They prefer to be out and about when it's really dark, since illumination increases their risk of getting eaten.
But sometimes the mood strikes while the moon is bright. So what's a lovesick lady frog to do?
Female Tungara frogs have learned the solution is to lower their standards. If it's pitch black she'll follow the most attractive voice, no matter the distance. But if the moon is out she'll go for the loudest one, indicating a ready male who's safely close at hand.
2 Disco Desperation
Tungara frogs like it dark, but hummingbirds don’t. During the breeding season, hummingbird males attempt to impress prospective mates with gorgeous, hypnotizing displays of their iridescent throat feathers. They really are something to see but… how do you complete with electricity?
Recent studies have shown hummingbird females are entranced by the flashing LED splendor of modern commercial billboards, sometimes to the extent of ignoring the real-life romance right beside them. It is not known if this infatuation actually damages their breeding success, however. Male hummers are persistent and in the end, it seems, their sweeties tend see the light.
3 Lovesick
New research has shown that women, when falling in love, experience physiological changes similar to those seen when fighting a virus. A new romance can cause women to produce elevated levels of interferon - suggesting that being 'love sick' is more than just an emotion.
Blood samples were taken from 47 women, over the course of two years, as they entered new romantic relationships. Researchers found that new love activated genes to produce interferon, which is a protein usually released to combat viral infections. In those cases where the flame of romance had begun to burn out, interferon levels dropped as well. Some of the researchers in this program have suggested these changes might one day be detectible by means of a “true love” test kit, available in stores much like pregnancy kits are today.
These tests were done on women only. Scientists have yet to examine whether the experience is the same for men.
4 (Much) more of you to love.
In the fight for the fickle attention of scientific researchers, there are winners… and there are civets.
Size matters. A lot. That’s what researchers found when they analyzed 16,500 published papers about carnivores from walruses to weasels.
Bears crushed the competition, averaging more than 250 papers per species. The closest runner-up was the walrus, with 145 papers.
The researchers found that across all families, body size was correlated with how many papers were published on an animal. The top 20 most-researched animals included three kinds of bears, as well as lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars, hyenas, and elephant seals. There were 28 species of Carnivora that didn’t appear in a single published paper. Out of those 28 species, 27 weigh five pounds or less - the size of a small chihuahua.
1 When I’m not with the frog I love, I love the frog I’m with.
Tungara frogs, of Central and South America, call and mate at night. They prefer to be out and about when it's really dark, since illumination increases their risk of getting eaten.
But sometimes the mood strikes while the moon is bright. So what's a lovesick lady frog to do?
Female Tungara frogs have learned the solution is to lower their standards. If it's pitch black she'll follow the most attractive voice, no matter the distance. But if the moon is out she'll go for the loudest one, indicating a ready male who's safely close at hand.
2 Disco Desperation
Tungara frogs like it dark, but hummingbirds don’t. During the breeding season, hummingbird males attempt to impress prospective mates with gorgeous, hypnotizing displays of their iridescent throat feathers. They really are something to see but… how do you complete with electricity?
Recent studies have shown hummingbird females are entranced by the flashing LED splendor of modern commercial billboards, sometimes to the extent of ignoring the real-life romance right beside them. It is not known if this infatuation actually damages their breeding success, however. Male hummers are persistent and in the end, it seems, their sweeties tend see the light.
3 Lovesick
New research has shown that women, when falling in love, experience physiological changes similar to those seen when fighting a virus. A new romance can cause women to produce elevated levels of interferon - suggesting that being 'love sick' is more than just an emotion.
Blood samples were taken from 47 women, over the course of two years, as they entered new romantic relationships. Researchers found that new love activated genes to produce interferon, which is a protein usually released to combat viral infections. In those cases where the flame of romance had begun to burn out, interferon levels dropped as well. Some of the researchers in this program have suggested these changes might one day be detectible by means of a “true love” test kit, available in stores much like pregnancy kits are today.
These tests were done on women only. Scientists have yet to examine whether the experience is the same for men.
4 (Much) more of you to love.
In the fight for the fickle attention of scientific researchers, there are winners… and there are civets.
Size matters. A lot. That’s what researchers found when they analyzed 16,500 published papers about carnivores from walruses to weasels.
Bears crushed the competition, averaging more than 250 papers per species. The closest runner-up was the walrus, with 145 papers.
The researchers found that across all families, body size was correlated with how many papers were published on an animal. The top 20 most-researched animals included three kinds of bears, as well as lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars, hyenas, and elephant seals. There were 28 species of Carnivora that didn’t appear in a single published paper. Out of those 28 species, 27 weigh five pounds or less - the size of a small chihuahua.
