Animal attractions: man-eating lions, anatomy of the kiss

Insight on the News, March 18, 2003 by Stephen Goode

Two recent advances on the science front are noted in dispatches from Reuters. First, for you zoologists out there or those about to embark on an African safari, don't fall prey to the old notion that it is only geriatric and infirm lions that become grumpy enough to attack and eat humans. According to New Scientist magazine of London, fresh research has found that most man-eating lions are in fact young and healthy.

Ever since the two most infamous human-devouring lions killed and ate nearly 30 people along Kenya's Tsavo River in 1898, it's been mistakenly assumed that, because man is slow and defenseless, only aged and ill lions opt for humans as prey. Seems that, after they were hunted down, the Tsavo River lions were found to have toothaches from broken teeth. But the new findings say that lions readily will hunt and kill human beings whenever they've a mind to do, so regardless of their age or the state of their health.

The second advance in science comes from Germany, where Onur Gunturken of Ruhr University in Bochum has looked into why people kiss the way they do. Do you turn to the right to kiss or to the left? If you turn to the fight, you're part of the majority, according to Gunturken, who found that twice as many people turn fight to buss, compared to those with leftward tendencies.

The good professor theorizes that the preference for turns develops while people still are in the womb, where other examples of"behavioral asymmetry" also are developed for life, such as right-handedness or favoring the right ear, eye or foot.

To research his theory, Gunturken secretly observed 124 kisses by couples in international airports in the United States, Turkey and Germany. Surprisingly, for the people has located no complaints from airport smoochers about nosy professors taking notes while they romanced.