Does alcohol improve its mastery of the foreign language? Do West African lizards have a favorite pizza garnish? And can cow painting with zebras stripes help repel flies from flies? These research questions and other unusuals were honored this evening during a virtual ceremony to announce the beneficiaries in 2025 of the IG Nobel annual prizes. Yes, it is still this time of year, when seriousness and the idiot converge – for science.
Created in 1991, the Nobels IG are a parody of good humor of Nobel Prize winners; They honor “the achievements that first laugh, then make them think”. The ceremony for the awards ceremony shamelessly campy offers miniature operas, scientific demos and 24/7 conferences by which experts must explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in only seven words.
Acceptance speeches are limited to 60 seconds. And as the currency indicates, the in progress in Honore may seem ridiculous at first glance, but that does not mean that it is devoid of scientific merit. In the weeks following the ceremony, the winners will also give free public conferences, which will be published on the improbable research website.
Without further ado, here are the winners of IG Nobel 2025 awards.
Biology
Credit: Tomoki to whom and al., 2019
Quote: Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima, Naoto Aoki, Say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Ueda, Hiroyuki Hiraoka, and Katsutoshi Kino, for Their Experiment To Learn Whether Zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
Any dairy producer can tell you that the flies bitten are a pestilent plague for cattle herds, which is why we see so often cows getting their heads, buffering their feet, throwing your tail and contracting the skin – trying to shake off the casual creatures. There is also an economic cost because it grazes and feeding cattle, lying down less, going to bed for shorter times and starting to regroup, which increases thermal stress and risks injuring animals. This results in less dairy yield for dairy cows and less beef yields from fattening cattle.
