Stargazing dung beetles, mice that survive for longer after heart surgery when they listen to opera, and whether or not you could walk on water on other planets – all of them are serious scientific questions that researchers sweated over for years. On Thursday, their hard work was honoured with possibly one of the most sought-after nods from their scientific peers: an Ig Nobel prize.
This is the 23rd year of the awards – a spoof of the even more prestigious Nobel prizes, which will be announced next month. The 10 prizes, organised by the humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research and awarded at Harvard University, honour achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".
The joint astronomy and biology prize went to Eric Warrant's team at the University of Lund for their discovery that dung beetles navigate using the stars.
The researchers had been studying the beetles' ability to roll their balls of dung in straight lines by using the moon as a guide – they use the pattern of polarised light around the moon as a kind of celestial compass.
"One night, however, the night was moonless yet we noticed the beetles could still orient in straight lines," said Warrant. "At first we were shocked and worried that our previous experiments using the moon were wrong. But then looking up we saw the broad stripe of light that is the Milky Way and realised they might be using this as a compass cue. This, it turns out, was the case."
Warrant said other nocturnal navigators such as birds and moths may also use the Milky Way as a compass.
And there's a potential practical use too, he added. "The principles we are uncovering in dung beetle navigation may be useful in the design of autonomous vehicles and robots, although this is likely to be few years off."
Masanori Niimi, of Teikyo University in Tokyo, won the medicine prize for his finding that mice given heart transplants survived longer when they listened to particular music. Whereas mice normally survived an average of seven days, those that listened to Verdi's opera La Traviata survived 27 days. Those listening to the Irish singer Enya survived 11 days.
Brad Bushman, of Ohio State University, won the psychology prize for confirming the familiar sense of feeling more attractive when you've had a few too many drinks.
In his study, participants had to make a speech about how attractive, original and funny they were, which was rated by independent judges.
Those who were drunk when they made the speech (and even those who thought they were drunk) gave themselves more positive self-evaluations.
But the ratings from independent judges showed this was unrelated to actual performance.
"Drunk people might think they are more attractive, but they actually are not," said Bushman. "This false belief may get drunk people into trouble, for example if they come on too strong to a potential romantic partner because they think they are irresistible."
The probability prize was awarded to animal scientists at Scotland's Rural College for making two related discoveries. "First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up," read their citation. "And second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again."
Bert Tolkamp said he and his colleagues were running several research programmes aimed at improving animal health and welfare. In their award-winning research, they fitted sensors on cows' legs that recorded how long the animals spent standing up or lying down.
The physics prize went to a study looking at how weak gravity would have to be on a planet for someone to be able to run across a lake of liquid water without sinking. Alberto Minetti, of the University of Milan, and Yuri Ivanenko, of the Italian Research Hospital, suspended volunteers above a wading pool to simulate their weights on different planets under different gravity fields, and asked them to walk on water. Their results showed people could probably walk across ponds of liquid water on the moon but probably not on Mars.
Minetti said: "A serious implication is to stimulate thinking about the discrepancy between the (relatively fast) timing of space exploration and the long-lasting evolution that would be required to adapt actual living beings to locomote in different gravity environments."
The Ig Nobels were handed out by Nobel prizewinners, including the physics laureates Roy Glauber, Frank Wilczek and Sheldon Glashow. Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the Ig Nobel awards, was due to end the ceremony with the traditional goodbye: "If you didn't win an Ig Nobel prize tonight – and especially if you did – better luck next year."
Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.
"Auditory stimulation of opera music induced prolongation of murine cardiac allograft survival and maintained generation of regulatory CD4+CD25+ cells," Masateru Uchiyama, Xiangyuan Jin, Qi Zhang, Toshihito Hirai, Atsushi Amano, Hisashi Bashuda and Masanori Niimi, Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery, vol. 7, no. 26, epub. March 23, 2012.
Laurent Bègue, Brad Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, and Medhi Ourabah, for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive.
"'Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beer Holder': People Who Think They Are Drunk Also Think They Are Attractive," Laurent Bègue, Brad J. Bushman, Oulmann Zerhouni, Baptiste Subra, Medhi Ourabah, British Journal of Psychology, epub May 15, 2012.
Joint prize in biology and astronomy
Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke Scholtz, and Eric Warrant, for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way.
"Dung Beetles Use the Milky Way for Orientation," Marie Dacke, Emily Baird, Marcus Byrne, Clarke H. Scholtz, Eric J. Warrant, Current Biology, epub January 24, 2013. The authors, at Lund University, Sweden, the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and the University of Pretoria
Safety engineering prize
The late Gustano Pizzo, for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival.
US Patent #3811643, Gustano A. Pizzo, "anti hijacking system for aircraft", May 21, 1972.
Alberto Minetti, Yuri Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, and Francesco Lacquaniti, for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon.
"Humans Running in Place on Water at Simulated Reduced Gravity," Alberto E. Minetti, Yuri P. Ivanenko, Germana Cappellini, Nadia Dominici, Francesco Lacquaniti, PLoS ONE, vol. 7, no. 7, 2012, e37300.
Shinsuke Imai, Nobuaki Tsuge, Muneaki Tomotake, Yoshiaki Nagatome, Toshiyuki Nagata, and Hidehiko Kumgai, for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realized.
"Plant Biochemistry: An Onion Enzyme that Makes the Eyes Water," S. Imai, N. Tsuge, M. Tomotake, Y. Nagatome, H. Sawada, T. Nagata and H. Kumagai, Nature, vol. 419, no. 6908, October 2002, p. 685.
Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl, for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not.
"Human Digestive Effects on a Micromammalian Skeleton," Peter W. Stahl and Brian D. Crandall, Journal of Archaeological Science, vol. 22, November 1995, pp. 789–97.
Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
Bert Tolkamp, Marie Haskell, Fritha Langford, David Roberts, and Colin Morgan, for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again.
"Are Cows More Likely to Lie Down the Longer They Stand?" Bert J. Tolkamp, Marie J. Haskell, Fritha M. Langford, David J. Roberts, Colin A. Morgan, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, vol. 124, nos. 1-2, 2010, pp. 1–10.
Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, for the medical techniques described in their report "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam" — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck.
"Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam," by Kasian Bhanganada, Tu Chayavatana, Chumporn Pongnumkul, Anunt Tonmukayakul, Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn, Krit Komaratal, and Henry Wilde, American Journal of Surgery, 1983, no. 146, pp. 376-382.