Your Pet's Time of the Month

Fluffy and Rover acting up again? Perfectly legitimate government-funded research suggests checking your lunar calendar or the night sky. One Colorado State scientist set out to debunk the urban legend about a full moon making animals crazy but instead found that medical visits were 23 percent more likely for cats and 28 percent more likely for dogs during the monthly lunar alignment, the Rocky Mountain Collegian reports.

The popular theory is that the extra light emitted by the moon makes animals more active, creating more chance for injury. However, many of the reasons for the visits (toxins and heart attacks) seem to have no direct correlation with light levels.

Two studies testing humans for similar werewolf-like behavior have proved inconclusive, yet some scientists attribute our immunity to full moons to our over-developed brains. Obviously, those researchers have not read this, this, or this story. —Jackie Mantey and Alison Go