10 thoughts on “[photo:] Science News”

  3. I don’t know about bicycle chains in a warm oven, but I do know that if you leave computer power cables in a box in a cool dark corner of the basement, they will reproduce.

  6. It’s also been noted that wire coat-hangers left in an empty closet will also multiply, if left alone.
    Conversely, socks consume each other, when left alone in a drawer. Within a very short time, where there were once twenty matched pairs of socks, there will only be three socks, none of them matching. And the mysterious part is – none of the odd three socks will be the same color as any of the original twenty pairs.
    One theory holds that as the predator socks consume their fellows, their metabolism alters, and they change color.

  7. True, computer cables reproduce, but they don’t breed true. A single 10BaseT ethernet cable in a box will later be found intimately entangled with RS232 and even AppleTalk cables, and at least one mutation will be defective.

  9. The socks thing is easy to explain. Socks are, obviously, chiral, and so only left socks can eat left socks and only right socks can eat right socks. However, socks are also able to eat their corresponding pairs, regardless of the chirality. Predatory socks are rare, but if a large group of socks are left together inevitably one sock will become predatory, eating its twin and then all socks of corresponding chirality, leaving only one of each sock remaining.

    As for the chain, I can only imagine how awesome that made your oven (and the next several meals cooked in it) smell.

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