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The Tarsier should be an Avenger! Speaking of which:

Did you squeal when a certain arachnid made an appearance? We did. Eleven years old forever!

Few creatures can boast of devotions so deep as greylag geese. Most are monogamous; many spend their decade-long adult lives with the same goose, side-by-side in constant communication, taking another partner only if the first should die. It’s a remarkable degree of fidelity, and it includes relationships of a sort that some humans consider unnatural.

Quite a few greylags, you see, are gay. As many as 20 percent by some accounts. That number might be high: It includes those males who first take a male partner but later pair with a female, or whose first bond is with a female, but after she dies, takes up with a gander. That said, plenty more are exclusively homosexual from beginning to end.

Which raises the question: Why?

That’s puzzled quite a few scientists—those who study greylag geese and also the hundreds of other animal species in which homosexuality is, confoundingly, found. After all, evolution is driven by reproduction. In animals, that requires—self-cloning reptiles not withstanding—the union of opposite sexes. Through a reproductive-success lens, homosexuality would appear counterproductive, if not downright aberrant. It’s certainly not aberrant, though, considering its ubiquity.

Read Why Are So Many Animals Homosexual? at Nautilus.

Keanu Reeves narrates. . .from the future.

By the end you will understand quantum mechanics.

Caltech’s Institute for Quantum Information and Matter collaborated with Trouper Productions to create the short in celebration of its Quantum Summit, an event where experts discuss the future of various quantum technologies. So the short film serves as advertising and entertainment—but it’s also an introduction to the basics of quantum mechanics, which you learn as Paul Rudd does.

“Seven hundred years ago,” future-Reeves intones at the beginning of the video, “Paul Rudd changed the course of history by showing the world that anyone could grapple with the concepts of quantum mechanics.” Rudd achieves this goal through the clever game of quantum chess, where the pieces must obey both the rules of chess and the laws of quantum mechanics. To understand what’s going on in this game, you have to master two quantum principles: superposition and entanglement.

Read on.

A flavor experience may begin with a past meal: The memory (1) activates dopamine reward centers, leading us to crave the flavors to come. We salivate.

A brain primed for pleasure begins to receive sensory impulses from the food as we move it (2) to our mouth, see its colors and shapes (3) and inhale its aromas (4).

Read Beyond Taste Buds: The Science of Delicious

Maybe it’s the return of the DeLorean.

Imagine that you are imprisoned in a tunnel that opens out onto a precipice two paces to your left, and a pit of vipers two paces to your right. To torment you, your evil captor forces you to take a series of steps to the left and right. You need to devise a series that will allow you to avoid the hazards — if you take a step to the right, for example, you’ll want your second step to be to the left, to avoid falling off the cliff. You might try alternating right and left steps, but here’s the catch: You have to list your planned steps ahead of time, and your captor might have you take every second step on your list (starting at the second step), or every third step (starting at the third), or some other skip-counting sequence. Is there a list of steps that will keep you alive, no matter what sequence your captor chooses?

Read the solution in Quanta. via 3QD.