Repurposing dead spiders, counting cadaver nose hairs win Ig Nobels for comical scientific feats
- The humorous 33rd annual prize ceremony at Harvard University saw 10 spoof prizes awarded to teams and individuals around the world
- A team of scientists from India, China, Malaysia and the US took the mechanical engineering prize for its study of dead spiders to be used in gripping tools
Counting nose hairs in cadavers, repurposing dead spiders and explaining why scientists lick rocks are among the winning achievements in this year’s Ig Nobels, the prize for humorous scientific feats, organisers announced.
The 33rd annual prize ceremony was a pre-recorded online event, as it has been since the coronavirus pandemic, instead of the past live ceremonies at Harvard University. Some 10 spoof prizes were awarded to the teams and individuals around the globe.
Among the winners was Jan Zalasiewicz of Poland who earned the chemistry and geology prize for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.
“Licking the rock, of course, is part of the geologist’s and palaeontologist’s armoury of tried-and-much-tested techniques used to help survive in the field”, Zalasiewicz wrote in The Palaeontological Association newsletter in 2017.
“Wetting the surface allows fossil and mineral textures to stand out sharply, rather than being lost in the blur of intersecting micro-reflections and micro-refractions that come out of a dry surface”.
A team of scientists from India, China, Malaysia and the United States took the mechanical engineering prize for its study of repurposing dead spiders to be used in gripping tools.