Now on ScienceBlogs: The Festival Recognizes Our First "Featured Fan"!
My small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing.
Come and visit Ed Yong’s blog Not Exactly Rocket Science in its new home at Discover Blogs.
"One of the best sites for in-depth analysis of interesting scientific papers" - The Times
"A consistently illuminating home for long, thoughtful, and thorough explorations of science news" - National Association of Science Writers
"Ed Yong... is made of pure unobtanium and rides TWO Toruks." - Frank Swain
"Ed Yong is better than chocolate, fairy lights, and kittens chasing yarn. That is all." - Christine Ottery
Why I blog
An interview with me
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Category: Animals
Ant and bee queens mate once in their lives, often with several males. Even if males mate succesfully, their sperm continue the battle in the queen's body. Some species have evolved seminal fluids that can incapacitate the sperm of rivals while leaving their own guys unharmed.
Posted by Ed Yong at 2:00 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Animal behaviour
Pocket Science - geneticist hunts down the cause of his own genetic disorder, and male moths freeze females but mimicking bats
Posted by Ed Yong at 2:53 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Malaria
Drinking beer, it seems, could increase the risk of malaria.
Posted by Ed Yong at 8:00 AM • 24 Comments •
Category: Animal behaviour
Cabbage white butterfly males label females with anti-aphrodisiacs after sex, which ward off other suitors. Parasitic wasps track females with these chemical chastity belts, hitching a ride to the place where she'll lay her eggs.
Posted by Ed Yong at 8:30 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Animal behaviour
Bees use the famous "waggle dance" to tell other hive-mates about the location of food. But they also use a less well-known signal to tell others to silence dancers who are advertising dangerous locations.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Animals
Field cricket mothers can warn their young about the world without ever meeting them. If a pregnant female is exposed to a wolf spider, her babies are more likely to freeze when they smell wolf spiders nearby.
Posted by Ed Yong at 9:30 AM • 8 Comments •
Category: Ants
Workers of the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus will walk off to die in solitude, if they are dying of a fungal infection. In fact, regardless of the cause of death, workers almost always take their last breaths in a self-imposed exile.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: Insects
Tobacco flowers open at night to lure hawkmoth pollinators. But if the moth caterpillars start eating the flowers, they switch to daytime opening hours, and draw in hummingbirds instead.
Posted by Ed Yong at 12:00 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Animals
The same mathematical principles govern the lives of insect colonies and individual animals, linking their weight to other aspects of their lives, such as how quickly they grow or burn food, how much effort they put into reproduction and how long they live.
Posted by Ed Yong at 5:09 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Animals
Drosophila flies have penises tipped with an array of hooks and spines. By shaving these off with a laser, scientists have revealed their purpose - to act as organic Velcro, securing the male to the female during sex
Posted by Ed Yong at 7:00 PM • 6 Comments •
ERV 11.26.2011
Tim Lambert 02.08.2012
Jason Rosenhouse 02.10.2012
Orac 02.16.2011
Orac 01.26.2012
