Ever find a spider in the bath tub? Here in Britain the common wolf spider is the single thing most likely to have me freaking out and screaming like a girly-girl, so it’s disheartening to learn that washing them down the plughole is no longer an option. Want to now why? Because THEY WON’T DIE!
Julien Petillon, of Rennes University in France recently decided to find out how long it takes to drown a spider-no one knows why, perhaps he’s just a complete bastard- so followed the logical path of inquiry and stuck them under water. Now, Spiders generally live for around 24 hours when submerged before finally carking it, and sure enough, that’s what happened. For a while anyway…
A little later the morbid Msr.Petillon checked on his ex-arachnids, only to find..they were running around quite happily. Scientists are assuming this means the little fiends can go comatose when the need arises, and then retuurn to life. I know better however. This means that every single incy-wincy spider i have ever washed down the drown, is still there, waiting to rise again…AS A ZOMBIE!!!
LINK (MSN)
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As it’s the second Fri 13th this year, here’s some good news for those readers with paraskavedekatriaphobia (that’s a made-up fear of Friday the 13th by the way), as scientists in Amsterdam have suceeded in blocking human fear responses using Propanolol.
Because they are cool, they seem to have decided that the best way to test this was:
A: show volunteers a big, scary spider.
B: give them an electric shock at the same time.
(Man I love science). Apparently administering Beta-Blockers at the time prevented the memory of these events linking with inherant fear associations, so the victims were’nt scared the next time round. While this may seem like a complete waste of time, it does have uses in ES’s favourite thing: War! Basically, imagine legions of crack troops,or indeed legions of ill-equipped cannon fodder, all of them with no fear at all of being shot at. While the US rely on total coverage and we go for training, there are …other countries…out there where manpower isn’t really a problem that this would suit. Not to mention making it much easier to get creepy crawlies out of the bathtub(and possibly getting rid of my irrational fear of blind summits).
LINK (Phenom)
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