/u/mellowmonk's posts in /r/askscience
How do animals "know" the warning signs of venomous creatures, such as a black widow's red hourglass or a rattlesnake's rattle? Is it purely instinct, or is there some transmission of information, the way migratory birds "learn" a migration route from those who've flown it before?
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Why does *not* completely using up a prescribed antibiotic contribute to development of an antibiotic-resistant strain? Wouldn't the resistant bacteria survive no matter how much of the antibiotic was used anyway?
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Is the sick, miserable feeling of, say, having the flu partly because our body stops producing endorphins, so that we *will* feel horrible and get rest?
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Do astronauts in orbit float because Earth's gravitational pull there is so weak, or because by orbiting they are continuously "falling"?
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If you added up all the bacteria, viruses, and spores killed by the average person's immune system over a lifetime, how much volume would they take up?
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How much of the increase in cancer rates is attributable to people simply surviving other diseases and accidents, etc., to live longer -- long enough to get cancer?
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What evolutionary factors make a region have a lot of venomous snakes compared to other areas with many snakes? (I'm looking at you, Australia.) What makes for snakes with incredibly deadly (to us) venom as opposed to, say, a rattlesnake-venom level of toxicity?
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If we humans were more intelligent as a species, *how* would we be smarter? What specific cerebral tasks would, say, work faster or avail themselves of more data? Would that necessarily result in a more cerebral species, that is, greater reliance on intelligent deduction than on emotion or instinct?
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