Staring contest

Love at first sight apparently applies to men only:

Researchers believe that this difference between men and women can best be explained by the fact that the former use eye contact to seek fertile and fit mates. Meanwhile, the latter shy from making eye contact or drawing unwanted attention onto themselves for fear of unwanted pregnancies and single parenthood, it has been said.

The same study found that it takes approximately 8.2 seconds of eye contact for a man to decide if a woman is attractive. It’s hard not to stare at the eyes of photographer Rankin’s hypnotizing Eyescapes for a whole lot longer, but that’s a different type of beauty.

• anatomy
• art
• love
• science

Making sense of the appendix, the one

Making sense of the appendix, the one in your body, not the one in books. “Perhaps the appendix lifted the odds that our ancestors could resist childhood diseases and live to childbearing years.”

• anatomy
• appendix
• medicine
• science