My homepage is still Yahoo! even though I don't use my Yahoo! email anymore. Why? Because their crappy news service is so often entertaining. I read an article today about how tyrannosaurus rex was probably a much slower mover than people think. The article had an ad for another story, part of some kind of 60 Minutes/Yahoo! tie-in. The headline was "Making Rats Gay?" Now, I have to say, I love any talk of gay animals. What a problem they are for religious righters and the "it's a sin" crew!
So I clicked. I went to a page with a whole bunch of 60 Minutes videos, most of them about sexuality. This time the rat video was called "Creating Gay Rats?"
The video has a Michigan State biologist demonstrating the behavioral changes in rats when their testosterone levels are altered just after birth; male rats act like females, females like males. The interviewer asks, "so you made a gay rat." The researcher replies, "I wouldn't say that these are gay rats."
Ok, Ok, I'll grant you that "But I will say that these are genetic male rats who are showing much more feminine behavior" is a bad headline. But when the researcher in your clip says the nice-scientist version of "no, you stupid idiot, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," it makes "gay rats" a pretty misleading headline.
I also liked when the interviewer commented on the male rat, "eww--look at him," with a repulsed lip-curl. Way to report! It's a rat. In a cage. Not a cut-up rat, not a rat crawling around her ankle. So who is she? I don't know, there is no mention of her next to the clip, or on the webpage.
Way to go 60 Minutes! Schreiber High School put out better videos.
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