Bum-breathing mammals, dead fish swimming among 2024 Ig Nobel winners

Wendy Jasson Da Costa and Michael Andisile Mayalo|Published 5 months ago

Covid-inspired research showed that bum-breathing was a viable alternative for mammals in respiratory distress, winning the Ig Nobel prize for physiology. The winning team uses balloons to demonstrate at the awards ceremony at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US on Thursday night. Picture: Reuters

NEXT time your nose is blocked and you think you can’t breathe, think again.

The winners of this year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Physiology have found that all mammals can breathe through their backsides.

While some may claim it’s an asinine joke, researchers wondered if humans with breathing problems could benefit from a blast of oxygen up the butt.

Experiments on mice, pigs and rats suggest that guts could be repurposed as an “accessory breathing organ”. The experiment apparently started during the Covid-19 pandemic and it’s not just hot air: the findings indicate that this “potentially provides an adjunctive means of oxygenation for patients under respiratory distress conditions”.

James Liao accepts the Physics Prize for “Demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout” ‒ live fish swim better ‒ during the 34th First Annual IgNobel Prizes ceremony, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Picture: Reuters

The Ig Nobel prizes which push the boundaries of common sense and believability are awarded annually in mid-September (before the stuffy Nobel Prize ceremony) for 10 achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.

The Ig Nobel awards were presented at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which has produced almost 100 Nobel Laureates.

The event features “24/7” lectures in which recipients first explain their subject in 24 seconds, then in seven words.

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to BF Skinner from the US for experiments on the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide them to their targets.

If you’ve just poured milk into your coffee, take note that the Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was awarded posthumously to scientists for their 1940 investigation in which they exploded a paper bag next to a cat that was standing on the back of a cow, to “explore how and when cows spew their milk”. By repeatedly exploding paper bags every 10 seconds for two minutes they discovered that a frightened cow releases less milk.

The Chemistry Prize was awarded to a Dutch team for research “Using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms” during the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes ceremony, at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on Thursday night. Picture: REUTERS

The Literature Prize went to a team who studied the sensations that people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

Here’s the proof; “The The The The Induction of Jamais Vu in the Laboratory: Word Alienation and Semantic Satiation”.

For men going bald, you probably don’t want to know that the anatomy prize went to Prof Roman Khonsari, a craniofacial surgeon and his team of a French and Chilean scientists. They discovered that the hair whorls of most people swirl clockwise ‒ however, in the southern hemisphere, counter-clockwise whorls are more common.

Pharmacists take note; the Ig Nobel for Medicine went to European researchers who demonstrated that fake medicine which causes painful side effects can work better than fake medicine that does not.

The Ig Nobel Prize for Physics went to James Liao who inspired a wave of inspiration with his groundbreaking discovery for “demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout”.

“I discovered that a live fish moves more than a dead fish,” Liao said as he accepted the prize.

2019 Nobel Prize in Economics laureate Esther Duflo holds props during the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes ceremony, at MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday night. Picture: Reuters

The chemistry award went to a team in Amsterdam who used a complex analysis called chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms. The researchers demonstrated the study by re-enacting a race on stage between a sober worm that had been dyed red, and a blue worm they got drunk. The sober worm won.

This year’s prize for probability went to a team of 50 mostly Dutch researchers. They flipped 350 757 coins to test a hypothesis put forward by a former magician and professor of statistics at Stanford University, Persi Diaconis. Their rigorous “peer review system and sore muscles supported his prediction that tossed coins are (slightly) more likely to land the same way up as they started”.

The botany prize was awarded for the discovery that some real plants imitate the shapes of nearby plastic plants. A prize-winner said their hypothesis is that the Boquila plant they studied “has some sort of eye that can see”.

And finally for those who want to live a long and happy life, the demography prize was awarded for detective work which found that many of the people famous for living the longest happened to live in places with “lousy birth-and-death record-keeping”. Australian researcher Saul Justin Newman read out a poem at the ceremony which concluded that the real way to longevity is to “move where birth certificates are rare, teach your kids pension fraud and start lying”.

The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is the brainchild of Marc Abrahams who also co-founded a magazine called Annals of Improbable Research.

The only person to have won a Nobel Prize and an Ig Nobel Prize is Sir Andre Geim. The Ig Nobel Prize awarded in 2000 was for levitating a frog by magnetism. In 2010 he received the Nobel Prize in physics for his work with the electromagnetic properties of graphene.