ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

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• Hunting secrets of the Venus flytrap (hint: They can count)
• Zebra stripes not for camouflage, new study finds
• Call of the wild: Male geladas captivate females with moans, yawns
• Weed blasting offers new control method for organic farmers
• War between the sexes: Fruit fly edition
• Material may offer cheaper alternative to smart windows
• The aliens are silent because they're dead
• The world's greatest literature reveals multifractals and cascades of consciousness
• Small but deadly: The chemical warfare of sea slugs

Hunting secrets of the Venus flytrap (hint: They can count) Posted: 22 Jan 2016 02:10 PM PST Carnivorous plants such as the Venus flytrap depend on meals of insects to survive in nutrient-poor soil. They sense the arrival of juicy insects, lured by the plants' fruity scent, with the aid of sensitive trigger hairs on the inner surfaces of their traps. Now, researchers have looked more closely at exactly how the plants decide when to keep their traps shut and begin producing their acidic, prey-decomposing cocktail of enzymes. The short answer is: they count.

Zebra stripes not for camouflage, new study finds Posted: 22 Jan 2016 02:08 PM PST Looking through the eyes of zebra predators, researchers found no evidence supporting the notion that zebras' black and white stripes are for protective camouflage or that they provide a social advantage.

Call of the wild: Male geladas captivate females with moans, yawns Posted: 22 Jan 2016 09:25 AM PST For female gelada monkeys, a grunt from a male primate won't suffice to get her attention. The call of the wild must involve moans, wobbles or yawns to entice these females, according to a new study involving the Ethiopian mammals.

Weed blasting offers new control method for organic farmers Posted: 21 Jan 2016 10:06 AM PST Weeds are a major scourge for organic growers, who often must invest in multiple control methods to protect crop yields. A relatively new weed control method known as abrasive weeding, or 'weed blasting,' could give organic growers another tool. The method, recently field-tested, is surprisingly effective.

War between the sexes: Fruit fly edition Posted: 21 Jan 2016 09:22 AM PST Drosophila erecta is an African fruit fly with a big problem: The male sexual organ is so rough that sex acts, almost literally, as a two-edged sword -- necessary for reproduction, but physically injurious. Because evolution places reproduction as first among equals, females have developed overlapping solutions to their dilemma.

Material may offer cheaper alternative to smart windows Posted: 21 Jan 2016 09:18 AM PST Scientists have come up with a theory to predict exactly how much light is transmitted through a material, given its thickness and degree of stretch. Using this theory, they accurately predicted the changing transparency of a rubber-like polymer structure as it was stretched like a spring and inflated like a balloon.

The aliens are silent because they're dead Posted: 21 Jan 2016 08:09 AM PST The universe is probably filled with habitable planets, so many scientists think it should be teeming with aliens. But life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly, say astrobiologists. In research aiming to understand how life might develop, the scientists realized new life would commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets.

The world's greatest literature reveals multifractals and cascades of consciousness Posted: 21 Jan 2016 08:09 AM PST James Joyce, Julio Cortazar, Marcel Proust, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Umberto Eco. Regardless of the language they were working in, some of the world's greatest writers appear to be, in some respects, constructing fractals. Statistical analysis, however, revealed something even more intriguing. The composition of works from within a particular genre was characterized by the exceptional dynamics of a cascading (avalanche) narrative structure.

Small but deadly: The chemical warfare of sea slugs Posted: 20 Jan 2016 05:12 PM PST Brightly colored sea slugs are slurping deadly chemicals and stockpiling the most toxic compounds for use on their enemies. While the phenomenon sounds like the stuff of horror films, it is common practice for these "butterflies of the ocean", a new study has found.

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