• Question: what is your favourite chemical

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 26 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Zhiming Darren Tan

      Zhiming Darren Tan answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      It’s got to be dihydrogen oxide (water).

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      I like a short protein called sex-peptide (SP) made by male flies and passed to females during mating. It’s a clever little protein as it makes females unattractive, so no other males want to mate with her. SP does this by changing what the female smells like, from something that males smell as being attractive (good pheromones/perfumes) to something that doesn’t smell quite so nice (I’ll leave that to your imagination).

      It’s a clever bit of evolution, as this means the female fly will only use the sperm from the first male she mates with, so he will have lots of offspring.

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