15 Unusual Research Topics That People Actually Worked On

bizarre-topics-cover-image

Just read.

1. Mosquitoes like cheese

1st-mosquitoes-and-cheese
Image source

The Lancet, Bart Knols, that was published in 1996, is a research on “Human odor, malaria mosquitoes, and Limburger cheese ”. This research proves that Anopheles gambiae shows keen partiality on biting human feet and ankles. The research also showed that these mosquitoes were also attracted towards Limburger cheese. This cheese is a stinky fromage that shares many characteristics with the whiff of human feet. Makes a lot of things clear, no?

Fact Source

 

2. Do woodpeckers get headaches?

2nd-woodpeckers
Image source

In 2002, Ivan Schwab an ophthalmologist, published a paper that details the raft of psychological traits woodpeckers have. These traits have helped them to avoid brain damage, detached eyes, and bleeding when they hammer their beaks into trees at the speed of 20 times a second, 12,000 times a day.

Fact Source

 

3. Which flea can jump higher? Dog’s or cat’s?

3rd-dog-flea
Image source

Fleas are the overachiever jumpers of the animal kingdom. To find out which one would triumph between the dog and cat dwelling varieties, researchers from the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse, France did a research. This research meticulously recorded the leaping efforts of a collection of both species of flea.The research states dog’s. Fleas on dogs can jump higher than the fleas on the cat.

Fact Source

 

4. Beer bottle Vs Human skull

4th-full-beer-bottle
Image source

In 2009, a team of researchers from University of Bern answered this weird question – “Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?” They figured that “A full bottle will strike the target with almost 70 percent more energy than an empty bottle.”

Fact Source

 

5. The propulsion parameters of penguin poop

5th-penguin-poop
Image source

Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow decided to answer the question – How much internal pressure penguins generate for poop firing process. The paper he published back in 2003 was, “Pressures produced when penguins pooh – calculations on avian defecation”. The researchers were able to calculate that the birds employed pressures of up to 60 kPa (kilopascal) to eject their bodily waste.

Fact Source

 

6. Whether chickens prefer beautiful humans

6th-chicken
Image source

In 2002, research paper by Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist answered a question probably no one thought of before. Whether Chickens prefer beautiful humans? Their study saw that 6 trained chickens were shown male and female faces ranging from average to exaggerated characteristics. Later a group of 14 (human) students were given the same test. Surprisingly the experiment showed a consistency with human sexual preferences. This also proved that human preferences don’t stem from face specific adaptations, but from general properties of the nervous system.

Fact Source

 

7. Whether it is possible to erase bad memories and keep the good ones

7th-erase-bad-memories
Image source

Remember the movie Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind? This is something similar. In 2013, Miller along with his team published, “Selective, Retrieval-Independent Disruption of Methamphetamine-Associated Memory by Actin Depolymerization”. The found that at least in mice bespoke amnesia is entirely possible by means of inhibiting the formation of a particular molecule in the brain. Probably it will soon be possible to get rid of the bad memories.

Fact Source

 

8. The nature of navel fluff

8th-navel-fluff
Image source

In 2009, Georg Steinhauser a chemist and researcher published a paper – The nature of navel fluff. After gathering 503 samples of navel fluff, he concluded that the reason behind this navel fluff was hair on the abdomen. The hair dislodges small fibers from clothing and channels it to the belly button. So, now we know where all the “fluff” comes from!

Fact Source

 

9. The effects of cocaine on honey bees

9th-honey-bees
Image source

A team lead by Gene Robinson, entomology and neuroscience professor, proposed a paper entitled, “Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior” in 2009. These papers proved that honey bees that were mildly affected by low doses of cocaine showed behavioral changes. These doses prompted bees to dance exuberantly for longer hours and gather 25% quicker when they found abundant food source. They also exaggerated the scale of their bounty.

Sweet.

Fact Source

 

10. Fruit bat fellatio

10th-fruit-bat
Image source

A group of researchers from China and UK decided to explore this topic in 2009. Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time. Female bats were not passive during the copulation but performed oral sex. Another interesting thing they discovered was – longer the bats engaged in fellatio, longer the copulation lasted.

Okay then!

Fact Source

 

11. Gay dead duck sex

11th-duck-sex
Image source

The absurdity of newly developed aspects of quantum theory was highlighted by an Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. sixty six years later, a new piece of research replaced cats with ducks in that experiment. The Dutch ornithologist witnessed a male duck administering a 75-minute raping of the corpse of another male duck, freshly deceased after flying into a window. “The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos” describes Kees Moeliker’s bizarre experience.

Fact Source

 

12. Do cab drivers have bigger brains

12th-black-cabs
Image source

London’s black cab drivers have to go through three to four years of preparation to and multiple attempts to pass the final exam. This inspired Eleanor Maguire to take a closer look at this feet of memory. His study that was published in 2000 denoted that the cab drivers had larger posterior hippocampi, i.e., the area of the brain responsible for spatial memory. A follow-up study with Dr. Katherine Woollett, proved that trained cab drivers were better at remembering landmarks.

Fact Source

 

13. Love and sex with robots

13th-robots-and-humans
Image source

Daniel levy the author of this research and British international master of chess earned a PhD for this thesis. He speculated that human-robot love, marriage, and even consummation are “inevitable” by 2050. His thesis covered subjects like sociology, psychology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Fact Source

 

14. A better approach to penile zipper entrapment

14th-penile-zipper-entrapment
Image source

Dr. Satish Chandra Mishra from Charak Palika Hospital in New Delhi, researched on this painful topic in the year 2005. He found out that many common approaches to undo this problem took too long or complicated things. According to his research papers, the most safest, quick, and lead painful method is to use wire cutters and a pair of pliers.

Fact Source

 

15. Rectal foreign bodies

15th-rectal-foreign-bodies
Image source

Dr. David B. Busch and James R. Starling, from Madison, Wisconsin, researched on this topic. They looked at two cases of patients (who had apparently self-inserted anal objects) along with the available data on this subject. They came across 182 hurtful foreign bodies that consist of dull knives and saws. This research was recognized for its literary value with an Ig Nobel Prize in 1995.

Fact Source

Sigh.

Cover Image Source

📣 Storypick is now on Telegram! Click here to join our channel (@storypick) and never miss another great story.