Beep-beep. Photo by jafro77.

So, um … have you “liked” Denim and Tweed on Facebook yet? I’m sure you meant to. I bet you were just busy with other stuff, earlier.

• Run, run, as fast as you can … For small ground birds like ptarmigans, the energetic cost of running decreases as they go faster.
• Declining effect. Ecologists really shouldn’t be all that surprised, or worried, about the “decline effect”.
• Skin guns don’t heal people. Doctors with skin guns heal people. A new “skin gun” can heal second-degree burns by spraying them with stem cells.
• Microscopic foraminifera know more than you might think. The history of a warming Northwest Passage is encoded in plankton.
• Ants are total mutualism sluts. Microbes living on leafcutter ants generate antibiotics that may help fight bacterial infections of the ants’ fungus gardens.
• Harder than it sounds. Science educators need to know when, and how, to say, “I don’t know.”
• Is that a just-so story in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? Scicurious and A Primate of Modern Aspect consider adaptive explanations for the shape of the human penis.

Video this week, via Thoughts from Kansas: a Sunday School song for the combative biologist. (See also Eric Idle’s classic “All Things Dull and Ugly”.)