Small Wonders: August 21, 2012

In this edition: music and mental illness, sexual seasons, and the menu for Mars.

* An adorable gopher lives beneath a rocket launch pad in Russia.

* The history of the theory that music can cause illness.

* Would you volunteer to stand directly below an exploding nuclear bomb? These guys did.

* ‘Tis the season–for sex.

* How to be a scientific fraud.

* Species named after famous people.

* “Is mental health a smoke screen for society’s ills?”

* A Spanish geneticist IDs missing children.

* Planning the menu for a Mars mission.

* Animals fossilized in the act of doing embarrassing things.

* Do animals get high?

* Another pressing question: Why do we wear pants?

The Small Wonders: August 21, 2012 by Wonderland, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.