First reason: no suits. Yes, it is true, biologists really walk in shorts and sandals as often as they can, so also at conferences. And then I am not even mentioning the shirts. Some people could make a rainbow jealous with the colours of their shirt, while others (and this is typical biologist behaviour) will try and promote their study-species by wearing shirts with a print of them, for example: a barnacle goose (totally random example). All of this, of course, only applies to the men, we girls always looked very normal and descent.
Second reason: we have an easy way of remembering people. With a conference comes the problem of having to remember all those names. But with all these different animals around to study (it was a conference about animal social networks) we can easily talk about people by referring to their study species: the flamingo guy, the manikin man, the girl with the sealions and the fish people. Somehow we always called (or maybe it was just me) the people studying great tits, the Oxford people. Important to keep in mind is that this only works when you are talking about people and not to them. Good thing we also had name tags.
Third reason: you can make great deals. Everybody is always doing fieldwork on very exotic places, except for the people working with great tits of course. So if you have something to trade... like base stations... (totally random example again), you could try and work yourself in doing some fieldwork on the Galapagos Islands. Also it is important to get allies. If people in other places are doing almost the same study as you, then it is handy to have some accomplices around who can keep an eye open and for instance if necessary (purely hypothetical) kidnap their study species in return for acknowledgements in a paper.
Fourth reason: field trips. With all that talking and watching and listening and eating and drinking coffee, we need a break some times. So what do biologists do? We go to the Zoo! Our conference building was located next to a beautiful piece of forest. When we walked about half an hour through forest and meadow we would end up at a free 24-hour zoo with German wild life, like wolves and bears and wolverines etc (maybe this is a good moment to mention the conference was in Germany). The zoo was very beautiful and somehow I ended up visiting it 3 times in 2 days.
Last reason: biologists are just extremely nice, interesting and funny people! (with a bad taste of music they tend to work into their presentations)
And if you are still not convinced (probably all you non-biologists out there), here is just a fun picture:
Cheers!
