Weekend Reading - links for July 12

The evolution of the external testes - why keep them outside the body?  A great discussion that starts out with a photo that is NSFW if your boss is overly sensitive to monkey porn.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/are_testicles_external_for_cooling_galloping_display_or_something_else.single.html

Some caterpillars have fake eye spots to deter predators.  New discovery shows that some of them can "blink" their false eye spots.  Does this video deter YOU from eating the caterpillar?

http://wildthings.sarahzielinski.com/blog/caterpillars-can-blink-a-fake-eye/

An update on the supposed upcoming bee-pocolypse.  Short answer:  Don't worry Buffy and the Scooby Gang stopped it.  As they do with most apocalypses (apocalypsi?).

http://qz.com/101585/everyone-calm-down-there-is-no-bee-pocalypse/

And here's a nice paper (link goes to abstract) that shows wild pollinators (wild bees and others) are better pollinators than the domesticated European honey bee.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1608.abstract

Turning bugs into drugs.  How we might soon be able to use the bacteria that normally live in our digestive tracts to deal with illness.  The cutting edge of microbiome research.  Every time I turn around life gets more complicated.

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/10/a-living-drug-cocktail/

Ooops.  That's five already?  Wow.

Just one more - a bonus funny one!

Here's a fun one - go to the following link and type ↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A then see what happens! (I hope they don't fix the "virus")

http://www.vogue.co.uk/

I try to limit my links to five but some weeks it is hard.