But when he came back, he says, it was as though he'd never left. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Discover World-Changing Science. Get smart. Sign up for our email newsletter.
Sign Up. Support science journalism. Knowledge awaits. Wild Animals. Other Mammals. Do elephants never forget? Elephant Facts. Elephants eat to pounds 72 to kilograms of food each day. Baby elephants, called calves, weigh around pounds 90 kilograms at birth. Elephant tusks are made of dentine, calcium and salt. The average lifespan of an elephant is 80 years.
Elephants use more than 70 vocalizations and visual and tactile signals for daily communication. Read More. Why are a donkey and an elephant the symbols of the Democrat and Republican parties? August July 22, Briggs, Helen. April 19, April 18, April 22, Cite This! Drug use by fathers has also been found to be related to drug use by their adolescent sons. In fact, the influence of parents compared to that of peers is believed to be stronger than we might assume.
In a study of university students, their drinking behaviour over the first two years was most dependent on parental influence, and peer influence became more important thereafter Standing and Nicholson, Given the results of all this research, it seems important that you choose your parents carefully. Select a father who is healthy, wealthy and wise, and it's likely that you will end up much the same. These days, many relationships have to endure separation: employers often expect their staff to travel long distances and few of us are able to find local jobs.
Separation can be a worry, however, since long-distance relationships are notoriously difficult to maintain. Can we take comfort from the proverb "Absence makes the heart grow fonder", or is it more a case of "Out of sight, out of mind"?
The outlook appears to be mixed. Absence can make the heart grow fonder if the separation is short and the relationship strong and deep. So before you agree on time away from your partner, decide whether your relationship is a candle or a fire. Don't risk extinguishing it by living apart for an extended period of time.
Instead of absence making the heart grow fonder, you may risk the heart going yonder. Research has shown that communication by phone, email and video conferencing is less effective than face-to-face communication; visual contact is vital and misunderstandings may arise without it.
However, if weekday communication in your relationship consists of a nightly minute phone call, it's not all bad news. Couples who experience separation are more likely to discuss their relationship and their plans for the future than couples who spend all their time together. Long-distance communication also enables partners to present themselves to one another in the best possible light.
This "idealisation" of your partner isn't so easy when you see them daily, sprawled untidily on the settee. The proverb "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is certainly true for men with regard to interest in sex. In , a study of 2, heterosexual men found that the longer a man's absence from his partner, the keener his sexual desire for her. This was the case whether or not the couple had sex when last they were together, indicating that a man's increased desire does not arise from sexual frustration but is a genuine product of the length of the separation.
This fact has its origins in the phenomenon of "sperm competition", as observed in birds, insects and non-human primates. It occurs when there's a chance that the sperm of two or more males might compete in the reproductive tract of a partner. The "absence" time is the period when the male cannot be sure that the female hasn't been having sex with others, which would reduce his chance of reproductive success.
Hence a man's ardour after a period of absence. Amazingly, this is reflected in his sperm count. The average count for a man who has spent per cent of the time with his partner since last having sex is million. This rises to million when he has only seen her for 5 per cent of that time, regardless of the length of time since they last had sex.
Absence may also make the heart grow fonder for long-lost loves. Passionate relationships that began at or around the age of 17 can, when rekindled many years later, be undiminished by the length of the separation. In fact, first love may be a time-bomb that is waiting to explode. Research by Nancy Kalish involving 2, long-lost and reunited loves found a 72 per cent "stay together" rate.
Only 1. These statistics are attributable in part to specific features of the adolescent brain, which has heightened amounts of the hormones testosterone and progesterone — both implicated in sexual intensity levels. These hormones set the stage for a once-in-a-lifetime sexual relationship that is not easily quashed by years of separation. Another reason for the intensity of recovered long-lost relationships is "frustration attraction".
Passionate love generates dopamine-producing neurons that persist and motivate people to seek out the object of their first love and it is now very easy to locate him or her simply by typing a name into Google. However, resurrecting the past in this way may be a dangerous game: the flames, once rekindled, may be difficult to extinguish. Humanity has been debating the principles of aesthetics, or "good taste", for thousands of years now, but beauty still defies objective measurement.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant questioned whether something can possess an objective property that makes it beautiful, only to conclude that, although everyone accepts that beauty exists, no one has ever agreed on the precise criteria by which it may be judged. The Ancient Greeks, however, believed that facial beauty had specific characteristics. Plato wrote of the "golden proportion", according to which the width of the face should be two-thirds of its length — preferably accompanied by a nose no longer than the distance between the eyes.
If Plato's hypothesis rings true, you may wish to take a ruler on your next date. Symmetry has been proved to be inherently attractive to the human eye. So a face does not necessarily seem beautiful because of its proportions, as Plato suggested, but because of the similarity between its left and right sides. Babies spend more time looking at symmetrical faces than at asymmetrical faces. Faces that are "averaged" to create a photographic composite, and thus hide any asymmetries, are rated by adults as far more attractive than individual pictures.
On the other hand, psychologists in Scotland have recently proposed that beauty may be in the eye of the "beer holder" rather than the beholder. In a study involving students in , they tested whether members of the opposite sex were rated as more attractive after the consumption of alcohol: unsurprisingly, they were.
Both men and women who had drunk a moderate amount of alcohol rated members of the opposite sex as 25 per cent more attractive than did a sober group. It was concluded that the so-called "beer goggles effect" is caused by alcohol stimulating the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of the brain used to assess facial attractiveness. Although it seems unclear whether there is universal agreement on what constitutes beauty, there is certainly some agreement that facial symmetry is one important factor.
In the meantime, if you look at your partner and you consider him or her beautiful which, of course, you should , you can congratulate yourself with the thought that people generally end up with a partner of a similar level of attractiveness as themselves. It is appropriate that green should play the leading role in this proverb about jealousy since this colour has long been associated with envy, "the green-eyed monster" Shakespeare, Othello, Act III Scene 3.
As far as the way we perceive things is concerned, the proverb is unequivocally true. According to James Pomerantz , the illusion that the more distant grass is greener is a consequence of optics.
When you look at the grass under your feet, you view it at an angle that is more or less perpendicular to the ground below. This "desaturates" the green, making it less intense. Meanwhile, the more acute the angle at which you view your neighbour's lawn, the less of the brown ground you can see. Green therefore dominates your perceptual experience, and your neighbour's lawn does indeed appear greener than yours.
But proverbs aren't meant to be taken literally. This proverb makes a strong statement that signals dissatisfaction, envy and jealousy — and thereby acts as a universal warning against these emotions, which can be potentially harmful. We are rarely happy with what we have. Psychologists describe a "greener grass" phenomenon whereby individuals constantly evaluate better alternatives for themselves and as a result are never satisfied with what they have. Perhaps this explains the familiar scenario of disillusioned Britons moving abroad, only to discover that the grass is actually greener here probably because we have so much rain in Britain.
Like Pomerantz in his study of optics, they may realise that the vision they had been focusing on is not, in reality, true to life. We are often our own sternest critics and may judge too harshly all that we are and all that we have. From our distant perspective, everything in someone else's garden is lovely and we cannot see the dusty soil of our neighbours' problems.
The proverb is often used in the study of relationships, and ever-increasing divorce rates may be attributable in part to the "greener grass" illusion. In this setting, too, the intense greenness of someone else's grass is often an illusion. Research Kposowa, suggests that men who divorce have far more health problems than those who remain married, and that women who divorce experience a drop in income of about 30 per cent.
So what positive points can we derive from this proverb, which draws attention to such potentially destructive emotions?
Although envy can destroy goodness, it can also be a source of motivation to try to achieve what our neighbour has achieved — and this could be something admirable, such as the ability to help and care for others, or the capacity for hard work. And there's no harm in wanting to be better.
Freud, writing to Einstein, stated that "envy need not be something ugly. Envy can include admiration and is reconcilable with the friendliest feeling for the person envied. Yet there is one strategy that may be healthier still: to look more closely at the grass that you are standing on now.
Sometimes you may realise that it is actually greenest right under your feet.
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