I’ve got your missing links right here (27 July 2013)

I’ve been away at a conference this week, so today’s set of missing links is both shorter than usual, and unsorted. Normal service will resume next week.

Maryn McKenna chronicles the rise of bacteria that resist our last-resort antibiotics.

Halticosaurus – another dinosaur that wasn’t a dinosaur at all. By Brian Switek.

Thor’s hero shrew. That is all. By Bec Crew.

Gorgeous writing: What it’s like to lack a sense of smell.

Drunk Science! Watch a very drunk Charles Choi explain the origin of species. And orcs.

Octopus Sex! Another awesome episode of Brain Scoop.

Mouseunculus – how the brain draws a little you (if you are a mouse). By Carl Zimmer.

Hazard of science: becoming allergic to your research subjects. By Hillary Rosner.

Every sentence of this news story is pure gold.

New paper: many oxytocin studies are junk because they use unreliable methods for measuring oxytocin

These scientists are based in Tatooine. By Megan Garber.

Women are more vulnerable to infections, and lots of people ignore that. Report by Brendan Maher.

When do kids understand death? Virginia Hughes look back at some old psych studies

Two-sentence horror stories are actually pretty chilling

Crocs get their five-a-day so you have no excuse.

Will the robot uprising be squishy? If there are octopusbots involved…

13% of cancer cases come from viruses, & hit the poor hardest.

Nyeyahaahghghggh. Moulting crab GIF

Do scientists mind being called boffins?

Robert Krulwich looks sternly at North American mammals and taps his foot.

NASA ignores childhood advice, stares directly at sun.

Onion: Frustrated novelist no good at describing hands.

Gotta love Myxococcus, the bacterium that hunts like a wolf pack.

That peacock feathery courtship display? Peahens rarely look at it, according to an eye-tracking study.

“Probably Among the Pretty Dangerous Volcanoes in North America. Maybe.”

Care to split a liver with me?

This artist made shells for hermit crabs that look like cityscapes

“What if we compare a human sports stadium wave to a hippopotamus down-the-river wave? Who does it faster?”

“People cannot feel the existence of this device.” Flexible electronics that are “imperceptibly thin”

On the messy science of death tolls

Remember that *awesome* Pacific Rim rocket punch? Yeah, it’s like a 747 to a kaiju face

Alexis Madrigal: I love when our robots orbiting other planets see our other robots on the surface.

A gallery of ant warfare

Great write-up of our panel on narrative dark arts at the World Conference of Science Journalists, by Anne Sasso.

Wolf howl identification technology. Individual wild wolves can be recognised by just their howls

“We’ve pretended that genome assembly is a reliable exercise & that the results can be trusted… that’s wrong”

This is about the New World screwworm, and bacon. Warning: may put you off bacon.

This is the first time anyone’s tried the Prisoners’ Dilemma with actual prisoners. Results were unexpected

Who needs sex when you can steal? For 80 million years.

Your banana is way more complicated than you think.

Applause! Maxipad Company Replies to Man’s Facebook Rant with Awe-Inspiring Sarcasm.

Great Movies from the Villain’s Point of View. No 17 is especially great.

If you want a bipedal leg, get an ostrich’s. Your legs are rubbish.

Very cool demo of just how big (and spread out) the Solar System is. By Joe Hanson.

When pigs fly, so does flu

15 years after a bogus autism scare, a plague of measles descends on a generation.