Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Smell the love

It seems like every time we turn around, more evidence is presented that shows that, within the scientific community, there's some research being done thats perhaps just a little bit on the silly side. Sure, there's research being done to cure cancer, to stop the spread of AIDS once it has started replicating in people, and to determine whether or not stem cells will really be able to help usher in a brave new world with fewer health problems.

And then, there's research being done to find out what happens when you remove the vomeronasal organ from female mice. This organ helps the mice to process pheremones, and, when you remove it, the females start acting more like males, especially with regards to sex drives. In fact, they sometimes had difficulty differentiating between male and female mice (something that we can only attribute to the incredibly small balls on the male mice).

So now, thanks to the research being done, we can rest easy. No longer will we wonder what happens when you put make-up directly into the eye of a dolphin. No longer will we be concerned with whether or not hair replacement technology will really work in the long term. And no longer will we be curious as to exactly what it would take to give a female mouse the sex drive of her male counterparts.

Thank heavens for all of that. Of course, now we're starting to wonder if you can use nail clippings from otters to make tiny little armor, and whether or not you can train spiders to weave intricate afghans. Thankfully, we can rest assured that even questions such as these are not outside the realms of certain scientists, who fill their days with government-supported experiments for answers that nobody really wondered that much about, and fill their nights with the most exclusive domestic beers that their livers can handle.

And now we're really wondering why nobody every tried to greenlight "Ernest Goes to the Animal Testing Labs" while Jim Varney was still around. We can just imagine the hilarity now.

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