- Image by biverson via Flickr
Not every science or experimental inquiry requires a “clean-lab” or double-blind design. If science in schools, from K to 12 relied more on inquiries such as this, where kids could prove those things we adults already know, they would be better reasoners, thinkers, and like education more than they do now…
Interestingly, Stocker and his colleagues also developed a theory that the tongue-lapping rate at which cats drink liquids appeared to vary with the animal’s mass, with smaller animals lapping at a lower rate. But how could they put this hypothesis to the test?
Enter social media: unsurprisingly, there are innumerable videos on YouTube showing cats of all sizes drinking, from lions filmed by tourists on safari to the tens of thousands — nay, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions — of videos that people have uploaded of their house pets. Indeed, a search for “cat drinking” on YouTube returned 5,040 results, most of which delivered the promised content (including the expected comical mishaps, as well as cats drinking a variety of unusual liquids like Coca-Cola, lemonade, coffee, tea, beer, Scotch, rum, gin, and vodka).
via MediaPost Publications Crowd-Sourced Science 11/18/2010.
Related articles
- Study Reveals Physics of How Cats Drink (livescience.com)
- Study Reveals Physics of How Cats Drink (cbsnews.com)
- Scientists reveal secret of a cat’s lap (cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com)
- Cats try not to make a splash when drinking (holykaw.alltop.com)
- Science of how cats get the cream (bbc.co.uk)
Barbara K Iverson 