The April issue of Wired UK features our picks for the 10 most absurd scientific papers from the past year (at the time of selection, that meant 2009). For your enjoyment, here are the links to those posts (in no particular order)!

1.) Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel.

2.) Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour.

3.) Swearing as a response to pain.

4.) Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children.

5.) The “booty call”: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies.

6.) Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats.

7.) Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time.

8.) More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy?

9.) Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?

10.) The nature of navel fluff.

Photo: flickr/kerryvaughan