Anus-Breathing Animals and Pigeon-Guided Missiles: Ig Nobel Prizes Reward Unusual but Valuable Science

Last week, Nobel Laureates handed out ten Ig Nobel Prizes during the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). No, the “Ig” is not a typo. The recipients did not receive the career-changing international award administered by the Swedish Nobel Foundation. Instead, they were bestowed with an annual prize—and the occasional paper airplane deluge—in a commemorative event organized by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine that recognizes bizarre science.

“The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is a gala mix of awards ceremony, circus, opera and many other things,” per Improbable Research’s website. This alternative awards ceremony—which this year included costumes and songs—highlights obscure-yet-relevant research with comedy to make serious science more accessible.

This year’s ten winning projects include an investigation of animals that can breathe through their anuses, experiments with pigeon-guided bombs and analysis of the swimming abilities of dead fish. The studies awarded were “each so extremely surprising that, in the event’s long tradition, it makes people laugh, then think,” Marc Abrahams, founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, writes for New Scientist.

The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Ceremony (2024)

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A 2021 study on anus-breathing mammals won the Physiology Prize. In the work, a team of Japanese scientists concluded that mice, rats and pigs can absorb oxygen through the rectum—a seemingly odd finding that holds implications for treating respiratory failure. Scientists found that injecting oxygen-rich fluids into the animals’ anuses could help them avert respiratory distress, per Anna Salleh of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The Peace Prize was awarded to the so-called Pigeon Project—a 1940s investigation by psychologist and inventor BF Skinner that tested the feasibility of putting live pigeons inside missiles to guide the weapons’ path. His daughter, Julie Skinner Vargas, an educator on the science of behavior, received the award on his behalf.

“Pilots were having a hard time hitting enemy ships,” Vargas tells the ABC, explaining what led to her father’s decision to work with pigeons. “They had to get so low to hit the target properly they often lost their lives.” To protect humans in combat, Skinner trained pigeon pilots and achieved some success. But in the words of the Independent’s Nilima Marshall, “the project never took flight.”

The Pigeon Guided Missile of WW2 #Shorts

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The Physics Prize went to James C. Liao for his so-called “dead fish experiment,” in which he studied how dead trout move in a current when towed behind a cylinder. The research was “a quick way to show that just the shape, slime and flexibility of a [dead] fish is enough for it to harness energy to hold position behind the cylinder and even move forward,” he said, per PA Media.

The rest of the awardees continue the list of funky findings. Research that suggests real plants imitate the shape of neighboring plastic ones earned the Botany Prize. The Anatomy Prize went to a team studying whether people’s hair swirls in opposite directions in different hemispheres. The Medicine Prize rewarded research that indicates fake medicine with painful side-effects is more effective than fake medicine without any side effects.

The Demography Prize honored work that revealed many claims of extreme longevity came from places with “lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping,” writes Abrahams for New Scientist. The records fit patterns that seemed to suggest clerical errors had been made, casting doubt on some reports of extreme human ages.

“I was joking to my family, you know, every scientist dreams of the Nobel. But my dream had a typo, and I’m perfectly happy,” Saul Justin Newman, author of the study on the origin of longevity claims, tells NPR’s Michael Martin.

The Probability Prize was awarded to scientists who had volunteers conduct 350,757 coin flips that showed coins tend to land on the same side they start on. A team that used chromatography to separate drunk worms from sober worms won the Chemistry Prize. Last but certainly not least, the Biology Prize was given to scientists who in 1941 exploded paper bags next to a cat standing on the back of a cow. The reason? To study the flow of cow’s milk.

“I was operating when I got the call,” Roman Hossein Khonsari, a craniofacial surgeon and co-author of the study of hair whorls, tells the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “I was extremely glad because, despite the undeniable irrelevance of this study, I am convinced that deciphering patterns in nature can lead to important discoveries on fundamental developmental mechanisms.”

Margherita Bassi | READ MORE

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.