Bees Act Like Serial Killers

Bumblebees foraging for food avoid stopping at flowers too close to home, perhaps to avoid attracting predators. Known as geographic profiling, this science has allowed scientists to locate the entrance to a hive by mapping which flowers the bees visit.

It is now being used to predict where serial killers might live based on where they commit crimes. Murderers operate fairly close to home, but maintain a kill-free “buffer zone.”

Loud Bar = More Beer

Research found that when bar music was louder, alcohol consumption rose.

Researchers think 1) loud music may energize and excite bar-hoppers, encouraging binging; or 2) it was too loud to talk, so people focused more on drinking.

Alcoholic Animals

In the Malaysian rain forest, scientists noticed a yeasty smell from a local palm and a frothy substance resembling the head of beer. The palm’s nectar has as much alcohol as some beer.

The pen tailed treeshrew and slow loris were found to repeatedly drink the nectar every night - equivalent of ~9 drinks, but they don't act "drunk." Also, they act as the plant’s pollinator.

Amazonian Tribe Doesn't Use Numbers

Scientists have found an Amazonian tribe that has no words for numbers. The Piraha people use “2” to mean even "5" or "6" and “1” is used for anything less than that. So words don’t stand for numbers, but for relative amounts.

These findings suggest language for exact numbers is a cultural invention rather than universally linguistic.

Bad Singing

Researchers randomly asked people to sing Quebec’s anthem. 40 out of 42 people sounded as good as the pros.

But why couldn’t the 2 bad singers carry a tune?

Repeating the experiment, researchers asked people to sing Jingle Bells and then tested their ability to listen to some music and identify bad notes. They found that bad singers either cannot recognize the wrong notes ... or simply do not care how they sound.

Write to Lose Weight

Research finds that people who write down everything they eat each day lose twice as much as those who don’t.

~1,700 participants were asked to follow a heart-healthy diet, attended weekly group sessions and did moderate exercise for 1/2 hour daily. After 6 months, ~2/3rd had lost at least 9lbs. Moreover, those who wrote down what they ate lost twice as much as others.

Vote Carefully

Researchers have found that the physical location of where people vote affects how they vote. Studying the 2000 general election, in Arizona the ballot included an initiative to raise state taxes to support education. People who voted in a school building were more likely to vote for the proposal than those voting at elsewhere.

In the lab, subjects were shown images, some pertaining to schools. Later, they were asked to vote on funding for education - those who had looked at lockers were more likely to vote yes.