A team of Japanese researchers wondered if painting cows with zebra stripes would prevent flies from biting them. Another team from Africa and Europe investigated what type of pizza lizards preferred to eat.
These researchers were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in Boston on Thursday, a prize that recognizes the most comical scientific achievements. This year's winners, honored in 10 categories, also include a European group that discovered that alcohol consumption sometimes improves a person's ability to speak a foreign language and a researcher who has studied fingernail growth for decades.
The 35th annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony is organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that highlights research that makes you laugh and then think. It is usually held a few weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.
A ceremony celebrating the laureates took place Thursday evening at Boston University, where the laureates were bombarded with paper airplanes and celebrated by actual Nobel laureates. Singers also performed a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year's theme, digestion.
