Make mine a double. Photo by Ballistik Coffee Boy.

• Not as obvious as it seems. Computer modeling suggests that giraffes are much worse swimmers than other ungulates—which suggests that giraffe populations should be easily isolated by water barriers. (Tetrapod Zoology)
• Guess it’s time for that second cup. Regular coffee drinkers need their morning dose of caffeine just to achieve the baseline alertness of non-coffee-drinkers. (Yahoo! News)
• Jet-setting dinos. New fossils show that ceratopsian dinosaurs (the group including Triceratops) had a wider range than previously thought, colonizing the landmass that would become modern Europe. (Smithsonian.com)
• No carbon-free lunches. A new analysis of plant communities’ ability to absorb carbon dioxide suggests that managed landscapes like cropland may emit more of the greenhouse gas than they absorb. (Conservation Maven)
• They still haven’t explained why Justin Bieber is so popular. As with biological evolution before it, the study of cultural evolution is advancing as scientists develop methods to directly experiment with cultural transmission. (A Replicated Typo)
• More bad news. Computer simulations suggest that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, now in its sixth week, will probably spread to the Atlantic by the end of the year. (Wired Science)

Here’s video of one scenario from the oil-in-the-Atlantic study.

The latest word on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as of the time at which I set the timer for this post to publish (circa 2230, 27 May), seems to be: that BP’s “top kill” maneuver, which would have plugged the gushing wellhead with mud, is not quite working as it ought. Meanwhile, the spill is now officially the worst in U.S. history, and poised to get even messier if it’s not contained by the start of what is projected to be a busier than usual hurricane season. Ugh. In non-oil-related science news:

Migrating bar-tailed godwits can fly 7,100 miles without a break. Photo by jvverde.

• The small and squeaky shall inherit the Earth. Fossil evidence from a more gradual episode of warming 12,000 years ago suggests that some rodents, like deer mice, will become more abundant as the globe warms. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)
• Got it made in the shade. Coffee farms practicing shade-growing techniques host more bee species, which may mean better pollination of the crop. (Coffee and Conservation)
• … and boy are my wings tired! The advent of lightweight GPS and more sophisticated tracking methods has allowed ornithologists to directly monitor migrating birds—revealing nonstop flights of thousands of miles. (NY Times)
• One more reason not to stand right behind a mammoth. A new study tracks ancient levels of atmospheric methane, and suggests that human overhunting of North America’s methane-farting megafauna caused the last ice age. (io9)
• I know what you’re thinking, punk—only one of those critters is a true bug. Bombardier beetles, cabbage aphids, and velvet worms all employ explosive chemical weaponry as defenses, making them the “ballistics experts of the bug world.” (Ecotone)
• No evidence of fossilized tartar sauce. Paleontologists have discovered a fossil frog with a fossil fish in its stomach. (Laelaps)

And finally, there’s a new version of the totally creepy Big Dog walking robot—it’s now cat-sized, and somehow more adorable than creepy. Until a pack of them show up to take me away as a slave to our new robot overlords, anyway. (via Anthony Hecht at Slog, who declares it “still creepy”)

My favorite is Adaptationist Green. Photo by Patrick Powers.

• Good science doesn’t match the sofa. People tend to prefer colors they associate with things they like. Therefore, natural selection is primarily responsible for humans’ color preferences. Wait, what? (Neurotopia)
• I’m pretty sure that’s what “generalist” means. Invasive plants are no better defended than natives against a generalist native herbivore. (Conservation Maven)
• Did you mean gesundheit? Google’s method of monitoring flu outbreaks by tracking search terms is almost as accurate as the CDC’s more expensive monitoring program. (Scientific American, but see Virology Blog)
• From the folks who brought you octopodes wearing coconut shells: Solving a mystery that puzzled scientists since Aristotle, biologists have shown that the female argonaut octopus uses her paper-thin shell to trap air bubbles and control her buoyancy. (Not Exactly Rocket Science, Wired)
• Insert “1up” joke here. Can playing video games improve cognitive skills? Dave Munger weighs the evidence. (SEEDMAGAZINE.com)
• There are more than you think. This week’s Radiolab epdisode, “Famous Tumors,” is awesome with a side of neat evolutionary biology. (Radiolab)
• No lightning involved whatsoever. A team led by Craig “first draft human genome” Venter built a genome from scratch, then inserted it into a bacterial cell and brought it to life. (NPR, NY Times, Wired, Oscillator)

And, in this week’s video, evidence that even something as bad-tempered and grungy as sloths are adorable when they’re young and properly groomed.

Style over ecological substance? Maybe. But how can you say “no” to that face? Photo by rockabillyboy72.

• Much like nectar-feeding bats, pentailed tree shrews drink alcoholic nectar from their favorite food plant, and get enough (by weight) to intoxicate a human. (Endless Forms)
• “Due to its well-known song, the field cricket is a comparatively popular insect species.” Choosing a “flagship species” to promote conservation awareness involves thinking about image as well as ecology. (Conservation Maven)
• Who knew that sharks like to climb? Undersea mountains are hotspots of biodiversity. (deep type flow)
• Sadly, no mention of the fact that they ate Joshua tree fruit. Reconstructions of extinct giant ground sloths’ muzzles suggest a diversity of foraging habits. (Laelaps)
• ArchaeopteryX-rayed. A new scanning technique applied to fossils of the feathered dinosaur reveals new detail. (Dinosaur Tracking)

And finally, via Observations of a Nerd, here’s none other than Douglas Adams discussing evolution and endangered species. (Be advised: It’s an hour and a half long. Worth every moment, though.)

This one is for PZ. Photo by Joachim S. Müller.

I spent my week readying another (!) manuscript for submission and doing large volumes of PCR. And, yes, surfing the web between thermal cycler loads. But! I read about science, so that’s mostly OK.

• What we have here is a failure to communicate. With their complex nervous systems and surprising intelligence, octopuses ought to be as sensitive to pain as mammals—but there’s surprisingly little evidence to address that question. (NeuroDojo)
• Where are all the men? Analysis of DNA from thousand-year-old “moa graveyards” in New Zealand finds female skeletons overwhelmingly outnumbering males. (Laelaps via @nerdychristie)
• You can only preserve what you can get. Land protection efforts by NGOs fall short of established habitat protection goals, a case study in Maine finds. (Conservation Maven)
• How long we have left is in-DEET-terminate. Laboratory selection experiments demonstrate that mosquitoes may be evolving resistance to the insect über-repellent. (Wired Science)
• It only took 41 years longer than we needed to put a man on the moon. A Florida horticulture professor has bred what could be the first good-tasting mass-producible tomato. (The Washington Post)
• We’re all Neanderthals now. Analysis of the first complete Neanderthal genome suggests that they interbred with modern humans. (Special feature in Science, NPR, John Hawks Weblog)

And for those of you who didn’t recognize the three-letter acronym in my introductory paragraph, this is what PCR does: