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Counting nose hairs in cadavers, repurposing dead spiders and explaining why scientists lick rocks, are among the winning achievements in this year\u2019s Ig Nobels, the prize for humorous scientific feats.<\/p>\n
The 33rd annual prize ceremony held last week was a prerecorded online event, as it has been since the coronavirus pandemic, instead of the past live ceremonies at Harvard University. Ten spoof prizes were awarded to the teams and individuals around the globe.<\/p>\n
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A preserved funnel web spider.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Brock Perks<\/cite><\/p>\n Among the winners was Jan Zalasiewicz of Poland who earned the chemistry and geology prize for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.<\/p>\n \u201cLicking the rock, of course, is part of the geologist\u2019s and palaeontologist\u2019s armoury of tried-and-much-tested techniques used to help survive in the field,\u201d Zalasiewicz wrote in The Palaeontological Association<\/em> newsletter in 2017.<\/p>\n \u201cWetting 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Some scientists lick rocks to better study them.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Mark Daffey<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cThe useful properties of biotic materials, refined by nature over time, eliminate the need to artificially engineer these materials, exemplified by our early ancestors wearing animal hides as clothing and constructing tools from bones.<\/p>\n We propose leveraging biotic materials as ready-to-use robotic components in this work due to their ease of procurement and implementation, focusing on using a spider in particular as a useful example of a gripper for robotics applications,\u201d they wrote in Advanced Science<\/em> in July 2022.<\/p>\n Other winning teams were lauded for studying the impact of teacher boredom on student boredom; the impact of anchovies\u2019 sexual activity on ocean water mixing; and how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change how food tastes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n