How STRANGE are your study animals?

The first thing I learned in this article: There’s a term to describe the bias experimental studies can have when their participants are not representative of the world population, but are from societies that are: WEIRD – western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. (So, when you report on such studies, you should never write «A new study has found that humans…», but rather «A new study has found that weird people…» – which in itself is already great). The second thing I learned (and what the article is actually about): The same happens when humans (weird people?) study animals. Those animals are…STRANGE – which can make study results less reliable than one might think. Fascinating read.