Vacation! (Almost)

I'm almost free— I took my last in-class final this morning, and am now working on finishing up my last take-home final. After I'm done with that, the quarter is officially over and I'm on vacation. I plan on finishing up a few half-written writing projects and posting them over the course of Winter Break, but until that happens, here's something that was just too funny to pass up. Check out last week's Science, page 1261 (or simply go here, not sure if it's open access or not). The article is about interesting observations regarding touch sensors on bat wings, and describes the research of one John Zook at Ohio University.

Zook has found what appear to be Merkel-like receptor cells which seem to be highly sensitive air turbulence sensors. He found that when he used— wait for it— Nair on bats' wings, they were unable to accurately turn in midair. They could fly in a straight line without incident, but as soon as they had to negotiate a 90-degree turn, their elevation control went haywire. As soon as their hair grew back, their flight patterns returned to normal.

While this is pretty dang cool, it's not where The Funny comes in. Consider the following quote:

Zook also described another type of receptor in the membranous part of bat's wings. Nerve recordings revealed that these receptors respond when the membrane stretches, even slightly. The most sensitive parts of the wing turned out to overlap with the "sweet spots" where the bats prefer to hit the insects they scoop up in midflight. (Zook mapped the sweet spots by videotaping the bats as they gathered mealworms shot out of an air cannon).

(From Science 310:1260-1261, doi: 10.1126/science.310.5752.1260a,
emphasis in quote is my own).

An air cannon. That shoots mealworms. For bats to catch in midair. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love science. What other profession would consider this to be anything other than a slightly odd pastime?