Sat Sep 20 04:50:00 UTC 2025: ## Ig Nobel Prizes Honor the Hilariously Insightful: Zebra-Striped Cows and Pizza-Loving Lizards Among Winners
**BOSTON, MA -** The 35th annual Ig Nobel Prizes, celebrating research that “first makes people laugh, and then makes them think,” were awarded at Boston University on Thursday, honoring studies ranging from the practical to the profoundly bizarre. The ceremony, hosted by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research, featured the traditional flurry of paper airplanes and celebrated the theme of “digestion.”
This year’s winners tackled questions most wouldn’t even consider, like whether painting zebra stripes on cows reduces fly bites (it does, by nearly 50%) and which pizza toppings are favored by lizards (four-cheese, apparently, for rainbow lizards in Togo).
The winners received their awards from genuine Nobel laureates in a ceremony punctuated by guest speakers, including Dr. Trisha Pasricha, who discussed the link between smartphone use on the toilet and hemorrhoids, and a mini-opera titled “The Plight of the Gastroenterologist.”
Other award recipients included:
* **Literature Prize:** William B. Bean (posthumously) for meticulously documenting the growth of his fingernail for 35 years.
* **Pediatrics Prize:** Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp for investigating the experience of nursing babies whose mothers eat garlic.
* **Psychology Prize:** Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac for their research into the effects of telling narcissists (or anyone) that they are intelligent.
* **Chemistry Prize:** Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich and Frank Greenway, who experimented with eating Teflon in hopes it could boost satiety without adding extra calories.
* **Engineering Design Prize:** Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal analyzed “how foul-smelling shoes affects the good experience of using a shoe-rack”.
* **Aviation Prize:** Francisco Sánchez, Mariana Melcón, Carmi Korine and Berry Pinshow for studying the impact of alcohol consumption on bats’ flight and echolocation abilities.
* **Physics Prize:** A team that investigated the physics of pasta sauce, focusing on preventing unpleasant clumping.
* **Scientists who discovered mammals can breathe through their anuses receive Ig Nobel prize**.
* **Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field and Jessica Werthmann, who tested the popular theory that drinking alcohol can improve people’s ability to communicate in a foreign language**
Associate Professor of Biology Carly York, who studies the importance of curiosity-driven research, emphasized the value of these seemingly absurd investigations. “Beneath every experiment that sounds absurd on the surface lies real insight waiting to be uncovered,” she stated. She further highlighted the often-overlooked importance of basic research, pointing out its role in driving economic growth and paving the way for significant medical and technological breakthroughs. York lamented the current trend of prioritizing projects with immediate payoffs, leading to cuts in funding for basic science, and warned that hindering this kind of research could stifle future innovation.
The Ig Nobel Prizes serve as a reminder that curiosity, even when directed towards seemingly bizarre questions, can lead to valuable discoveries and a deeper understanding of the world around us.
First Piper 