How many plants can be made into booze? Why are you so emotionally involved in your home team? And why is your cat such an asshole?
We are two grad students studying biology at University of Illinois who need an outlet for our sciency thoughts on pop culture, current events, and academia. You might remember us from the Science Politely series from last fall. Rhiannon is our plant expert, studying relationships among carrots, parsnips, poison hemlock, and other delicious and deadly things. Laura is an animal behaviorist, examining personality and parenting in fish. As scientists, we have a specialty, but both of us have many other interests spanning different fields of biology and science as well.
If there are any topics relating to science that you are particularly curious about, let us know and we will try to incorporate your interests too. Look for us every Friday morning; we will be alternating authorship of our posts each week. We’re very excited to be joining the Smile Politely family and look forward to sharing some science with you!
P.S. The answer is all of them. All plants can be made into booze. The result might not be tasty, but will be inebriating!
Written by Rhiannon Peery, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant and Laura Stein, Ph.D. candidate in the department of Animal Biology at the University of Illinois.