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Episode 1604

Snookums and Snicklefritz

A new book about how animals perceive their environment reveals immense worlds beyond our own. A bee can see ultraviolet light, catfish have taste buds all over their bodies, and manatees use highly sensitive lips to examine nearby objects. Also...

Mr. Darcy, What an Irresistible Scent!

A pheromone in the urine of male mice is called darcin, named for Mr. Darcy, the man Elizabeth Bennet finds irresistible in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Bookshop|Amazon). Manatees use their sensitive lips to oripulate their environment...

“Every Bird That Cuts the Airy Way”

The new book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Bookshop|Amazon) delightfully combines scientific writing with a literary sensibility and a gift for vivid similes. It’s by Ed Yong, who won a Pulitzer for...

Favorite Oxymorons

O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! A listener senses something awfully good about oxymorons, from the Greek for “pointedly foolish.” Grant shares this favorite example from Shakespeare’s Romeo...

electro-wetting

electro-wetting  n.— «In other application fields, so-called liquid lenses have been known for some time. In these, the application of electrical voltages causes a shape change of the liquid lens and therefore a change in its focal length...

horse tooth floater

horse tooth floater  n.— «Doc Ellers was very pleased, as he presented me with a set of old horse teeth floaters. He told me they worked much better than the new contraptions. He was eighty.» —by Re`al “Buill” Oney My...

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