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Article: Bats and balls; Animal behaviour.(Bigger testes mean smaller brains)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 10, 2005
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Bigger testes mean smaller brains
MEN are often accused by women of, to put it bluntly, having their brains in their balls. A joke, of course. But perhaps not as much of one as people might like to think. For a study of bats carried out by Scott Pitnick, of Syracuse University in New York State, and his colleagues, suggests that there really is a trade-off between the two organs.
With about 1,000 species, bats are the second-largest group of mammals (rodents are top), so there is plenty of material for interspecies studies. Dr Pitnick's project, published in this week's Proceedings of the Royal Society, looked at ...