Recreational Science

While the baby monkeys raised with a terry cloth mom developed better socially than those with the metal wire mom only, sadly both groups showed some developmental problems. The best thing for Punch is to be raised by a real mom.

Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys YouTube video by Michael Baker

These experiments by Harry Harlow in the 50s and 60s are ethically questionable, but showed that emotional and "contact" comfort are incredibly important to baby monkeys for attachment to a "mom". Much more important than food. Here's a video of the experiment: youtu.be/OrNBEhzjg8I?...

Why does Punch the monkey love his orangutan plushie so much? Well, experiments showed that baby monkeys raised with a metal wire "mom" that provided food and a terry cloth "mom" that did not provide food much preferred the terry cloth one and went to it for comfort 1/2
#punch #punchthemonkey

Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain - Nature It takes moments for the human brain to recognize a person or an object even if seen under very different conditions. This raises the question: can a single neuron respond selectively to a given face ...

Turns out, we might use single brain cells to recognize important people in our lives, like a neural speed dial. This hilarious study from 2005 found that some people dedicate one neuron to recognizing Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry: www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Quiz: guess the topic of scientific journals by their wacky titles There are a lot of funny scientific studies, but there are also plenty of scientific journals with fun and wacky titles. Can you guess the topic of these journals based on their title? Oh, also try…

Can you guess the topic of scientific journals based on their wacky titles? Check out the quiz!
scientafic.com/2026/02/09/q...

#science #journals #publishing #recreationalscience #recscipod

Great episode!

Quiz: can you answer these tricky science questions from ChatGPT? Are you smarter than ChatGPT? Do you know more science trivia than ChatGPT? Try to answer these science questions* from ChatGPT to find out! *some may actually be bad science jokes. Quiz #1 | Quiz …

Quiz: can you answer these tricky science questions from ChatGPT? scientafic.com/2026/01/22/q...
#science #quiz #sciencequiz

Scientafic! The science blog for the ordinary skeptic

Hi Dani, we're science communicators interested in spreading the love of science and the scientific method. Can you please add us to the science feed? Thanks!

scientafic.com

As bitter as a trombone: Synesthetic correspondences in nonsynesthetes between tastes/flavors and musical notes - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics In parallel to studies of various cases of synesthesia, many cross-modal correspondences have also been documented in nonsynesthetes. Among these correspondences, implicit associations between taste a...

Does the sound a trombone makes have a defined taste? Turns out, maybe it does! Check out this interesting study on a unique form of synesthesia:

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

#science #recreationalscience #recscipod #synesthesia

Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect - npj Mental Health Research npj Mental Health Research - Unexpected events and prosocial behavior: the Batman effect

Does the presence of Batman increase how likely a pregnant woman will get offered a seat on a crowded train?

Find out in this creative study:
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

#batman #darkknight #science #recreationalscience #recscipod

Predicting Smartphone Operating System from Personality and Individual Differences | Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Abstract Android and iPhone devices account for over 90 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide. Despite being very similar in functionality, current discourse and marketing campaigns suggest that k...

Can you predict who uses iPhones and who uses Android phones? What traits and characteristics would you use? Find out in this interesting study:

www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

#science #recscipod #iphone #android #phone #recreationalscience

Physical activity alters limb bone structure but not entheseal morphology Studies of ancient human skeletal remains frequently proceed from the assumption that individuals with robust limb bones and/or rugose, hypertrophic e…

If your thanksgiving turkey is fat and plump, that doesn't mean it didn't exercise. According to this wonderful study, you can check the leg bone thickness to find out if your turkey was a gym rat:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#thanksgiving #turkey #exercise #science #recscipod

How common is pathological nose picking, or rhinotillexomania? Do teenage boys pick their nose? How often? Why do they do it? How do they feel about it? Is it pathological? A couple of psychiatrists investigated how often high school boys engage in nose pickin…

Do you suffer from rhinotillexomania, or pathological nose picking? How common is this "disorder"? A couple of psychiatrists surveyed a group of high school students to find out. Read about it here:

scientafic.com/2025/11/17/a...

#science #recscipod #recreationalscience #medicine

Children are unsuspecting meat eaters: An opportunity to address climate change Eating a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways people can reduce their carbon footprint. However, global consumption of meat and other an…

Do kids know where food comes from?
No, they do not.

Kids think bacon and hotdogs come from plants.
Kids think popcorn comes from animals.

Check out this incredible study:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#science #recreationalscience #food #recscipod

Despite its popularity in the 80s and 90s, shocking yourself with jumper cables attached to a car battery is probably not a good way to treat venomous rattlesnake bites. Check out this fascinating case report:

www.annemergmed.com/article/S019...

#rattlesnake #recreationalscience #recscipod

Fear is sexy and using zombie arms to carve pumpkins

we discuss this intriguing study on the latest episode of the podcast. Find it below or wherever you get your podcasts:
open.spotify.com/episode/3dJe...

Should you take your date to a scary movie or haunted house this Halloween? According to this study, yes you should! Turns out fear-inducing situations create sexual attraction:
psycnet.apa.org/record/1975-...

#science #recreationalscience #halloween #fear #recscipod

The role of meat consumption in the denial of moral status and mind to meat animals People enjoy eating meat but disapprove of harming animals. One resolution to this conflict is to withdraw moral concern from animals and deny their c…

Does eating meat make you quantifiably immoral?

This study showed that consuming beef makes people view cows less humanely:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#science #recreationalscience #recscipod #meat #beef

Brain size in birds is related to traffic accidents | Royal Society Open Science Estimates suggest that perhaps a quarter of a billion birds are killed by traffic annually across the world. This is surprising because birds have been shown to learn speed limits. Birds have also been shown to adapt to the direction of traffic and lane ...

Do animals that get hit by cars have smaller brains? Are they dumber than their friends who avoid a similar fate?

This study examined over 3500 postmortem specimen to find out:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

#science #recreationalscience #recscipod

The Nobel Prize is exciting and all, but the most prestigious prize in science may actually be the Darwin Awards. We discuss some of the winners in the latest episode of #recscipod!
open.spotify.com/episode/74hl...

#nobel #nobelprize #darwin #darwinawards #recreationalscience #science

Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile ...

The title of this fascinating study says it all: Fellatio by Fruit Bats Prolongs Copulation Time

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

#recreationalscience #recscipod #science

Frontiers | When Yawning Occurs in Elephants Yawning is a widely recognized behavior in mammalian species. One would expect that elephants yawn, although to our knowledge, no one has reported observatio...

"One would expect that elephants yawn, although to our knowledge, no one has reported observations of yawning in any species of elephant."

Do elephants yawn? Find out the answer in this study:
www.frontiersin.org/journals/vet...

#recreationalscience #recscipod #science

Dominant, open nonverbal displays are attractive at zero-acquaintance | PNAS Across two field studies of romantic attraction, we demonstrate that postural expansiveness makes humans more romantically appealing. In a field st...

Turns out, manspreading and other forms of "dominant, open nonverbal displays" get you more matches on Tinder. Check out the PNAS study here!
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

#recscipod #recreationalscience #science #tinder #dating #manspreading

Microbiological Laboratory Hazard of Bearded Men | Applied Microbiology An investigation was conducted to evaluate the hypothesis that a bearded man subjects his family and friends to risk of infection if his beard is contaminated by infectious microorganisms while he is working in a microbiological laboratory. Bearded and unbearded men were tested with Serratia marcescens and Bacillus subtilis var. niger. Contact aerosol transmission from a contaminated beard on a mannequin to a suitable host was evaluated with both Newcastle disease virus and Clostridium botulinum toxin, type A. The experiments showed that beards retained microorganisms and toxin despite washing with soap and water. Although washing reduced the amount of virus or toxin, a sufficient amount remained to produce disease upon contact with a suitable host.

Are beards breeding grounds for bacteria? Is it safe to have a beard in a microbiology lab? Will chickens get sick if you rub them into beards contaminated with bacteria? This studies answers all of the above:
journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...

#science #microbiology #recscipod #recreationalscience

Expensive placebos work better and humans can sniff out their dogs

Dogs can identify their owners by smell, but can dog owners identify their dogs by smell? Find out on the latest episode of #RecSciPod!
open.spotify.com/episode/602W...

#science #dogs #recreationalscience #placebo #smell

Itch Relief by Mirror Scratching. A Psychophysical Study ObjectiveThe goal of this study was to test whether central mechanisms of scratching-induced itch attenuation can be activated by scratching the limb contralateral to the itching limb when the partici...

Did you know you can relieve an itch on your left arm by scratching your right arm? Just need a mirror.

Check out this interesting study from Helmchen et al., 2013:
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

#itch #scratch #phantomitch #phantompain #science #recscipod #recreationalscience

Size matters, in your pants and inside your head Recreational Science · Episode

Does size matter? Find out on the latest episode of the Recreational Science podcast!
open.spotify.com/episode/35N1...

#science #recscipod #recreationalscience #podcast

Dogs are sensitive to small variations of the Earth’s magnetic field - Frontiers in Zoology Introduction Several mammalian species spontaneously align their body axis with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field (MF) lines in diverse behavioral contexts. Magnetic alignment is a suitable paradi...

Dogs are apparently somewhat magnetic! According to this study, dogs are quite sensitive to the earth's magnetic field and align their bodies to it while they, uh, do their business.

frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

#dogs #magnets #science #recreationalscience #recscipod

Replying to SPAM scientific conference invitation emails (special episode) Recreational Science · Episode

Do you get SPAM conference invitation emails? Well, we replied to one and ended up going on quite an adventure. Listen to the story on the latest episode of #recscipod

open.spotify.com/episode/0YMR...

#spam #science #recreationalscience

Physiological and behavioral reactions elicited by simulated and real-life visual and acoustic helicopter stimuli in dairy goats - BMC Veterinary Research Background Anecdotal reports and a few scientific publications suggest that flyovers of helicopters at low altitude may elicit fear- or anxiety-related behavioral reactions in grazing feral and farm a...

Are goats scared of the Dutch Air Force? A group of scientists wanted to find out. The answer? No, not really.

bmcvetres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....
van der Staay et al., 2011
#goats #airforce #science #recreationalscience #recscipod #experiment