Down and up in a cat, dried plasma, animalistic us, snot useful

This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them:

A sick experiment —The phrase “what goes up must come down” isn’t obviously relevant to the insides of a cat. The countervailing “what goes down must come up” is, when that cat has swallowed something of dubious nutritional worth. Christiana Fischer, Nolan Chalifoux and Erica Reineke have quantified the “must” aspect of it, as they explain to anyone with the stomach to read their report…Food stuff —… The pet food industry has taken spray-dried animal plasma to its bosom. Reports indirectly show how the little-bits-of-everything substance could become tempting for chefs and food vendors. In Spain, Javier Polo and Carmen Rodríguez have written a series of studies…Just like us —Inspired by the old saying that “people are the strangest animals”, Feedback wants to compile a sturdy list of animal behaviour metaphors that also tellingly describe some of our fellow humans. This could be an enlightening project. The colourful strangenesses characteristic of certain people strongly resemble the colourful strangenesses characteristic of certain species of other, non-human animals, after all. Such a list might also be useful to professionals….Snot a superpower — Patrick Laughlin contributes to another of Feedback’s catalogue projects. Laughlin boasts a trivial superpower that can be cultivated and that can extend the joys of childhood into later life….