Scientists Discover The Secret Behind A Mouse’s Swagger (And Big Balls): Yogurt!
First off I want to know exactly why scientists felt the need to discover why some mice had big testicles in the first place, never mind about the whole ‘swagger’ thing.
Anyway, according to MIT researchers Susan Erdman and Eric Alm their research was based off of a recent Harvard study that showed that yogurt could possibly prevent age-related weight gain. When they read the study they decided to do some yogurt testing of their own with some mice that that had hanging around the lab.
Taking 40 males and 40 females they fed them either a standard mouse type diet or a diet high in fat and low in fiber, they then supplemented the diets of half the mice from each group with yogurt.
While the original intention was to study the effects of the yogurt on the mice obesity rates as well as other health issues they were suddenly confronted with something that they hadn’t expected.
Then the researchers spotted something particular about the males: they projected their testes outward, which endowed them with a certain “mouse swagger,” Erdman says. On measuring the males, they found that the testicles of the yogurt consumers were about 5 percent heavier than those of mice fed typical diets alone and around 15 percent heavier than those of junk-eating males.
More important, that masculinity pays off. In mating experiments, yogurt-eating males inseminated their partners faster and produced more offspring than control mice. Conversely, females that ate the yogurt diets gave birth to larger litters and weaned those pups with greater success. Reflecting on their unpublished results, Erdman and Alm think that the probiotic microbes in the yogurt help to make the animals leaner and healthier, which indirectly improves sexual machismo.
Okay guys .. no pushing .. line up nicely in that yogurt aisle …
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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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