Man who lived like goat among Ig Nobel winners
A man who lived like a goat in the Alps for three days, a researcher who dressed rats in woolly trousers to understand their sex lives, and scientists who investigated the personalities of rocks are a
A man who lived like a goat in the Alps for three days, a researcher who dressed rats in woolly trousers to understand their sex lives, and scientists who investigated the personalities of rocks are among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel awards held at Harvard University.
The spoof awards are held annually and were inspired by the Annals of Improbable Research, an American science humour magazine that celebrates and honours the wackier inventions from the scientific community.
According to the Ig Nobel website, the main aim of the award is to make people “laugh, then think,” and incite the public’s interest in STEM (science, technology, engineers, mathematics). The winners receive $10-trillion cash prizes in Zimbabwean money, which is virtually worthless.
Ahmed Shafik, one of the winners this year, dressed rats in polyester, cotton, wool and polyester-cotton blend pants to determine the different textiles’ effects on their sex drive. The professor at Cairo University in Egypt, who died in 2007, found that rats that wore polyester or polyester blend pants displayed less sexual activity, perhaps because of the electrostatic charges created by polyester. He suggested that the results could be applied to humans.
Brit Thomas Thwaites won the biology prize for his project titled “A holiday from being human (GoatMan)”. Thwaites created prosthetic extensions of his limbs that allowed him to move like and to roam in the company of goats.
Among other prize winners was a German team that discovered that if you have an itch on the left side of your body, you can relieve it by peering into a mirror and scratching the right side of your body (and vice-versa). Japanese researchers won the Perception prize for examining whether things look different when you bend over and peer at them through your legs.
The Ig Nobels ceremony is wacky and fun. The audience throws paper planes at the stage, while some Ig Nobel winners come dressed as their research or perform a colorful rendition of it, CNN reported.