In the weeks preceding the real Nobel prizes are announced, the scientific community gathers each year for something a little lighter: IG Nobel prizes.
Based on “achievements of honor so surprising that they make people laugh, then think”, this year marks the 35th anniversary of the prizes. These prestigious prizes celebrate the more unusual contributions of science, honor the imaginative, and perhaps above all, stimulate people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.
This year’s winners brought us pizza eaten lizards, bats from, nail growth, etc. which all celebrate the joy and the pleasure of asking all the questions. You will find a full list of IG Nobel Prize winners 2025 (and a team recipe) below.
Do lizards like pizza?
It turns out that ninja turtles mutant adolescents are not the only reptiles to have a taste for pizza. Daniele Dendi, Gabriel H. Segniagbeto, Roger Meek and Luca Luiselli received the Nutrition Prize, “to study the extent in which a certain type of lizard chooses to eat certain types of pizza”.
This team spotted a rainbow lizard flying a slice of pizza in a complex. As a curious scientists, they wanted to know if the rainbow lizards (which mainly eat insects) here had a taste for the Italian dish and if they had a favorite garnish, like many of us. They followed nine lizards, who had the choice between four cheeses pizza and a plate of pizza “Four Seasons”.
The lizards quickly found the pizza and ate it, but they only eaten four cheese pizza. The team believes that it might be easier for them to digest this type of pizza, where there could be clues that attract them in cheese options.
For a better scientifically proven way of reheating the pizza, we have covered you.
The perfect cacio and pepe
Pizza was not the only delicious Italian cuisine honored this year. The Physics Prize Went to Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarochi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti, “For Discoveries about the Physics of Pasta Sauce, Escilely the phase transition that can Clumping, which can be because of inconvenience.
When manufacturing cacio e pepe, if the water is too hot, or if you do not have the right ratio of cheese-star, the sauce turns into a thin liquid filled with frozen curd globes. Earlier this year, these physicists developed a way to prevent agitation. Use corn starch in cheese and pepper sauce instead of only counting on the amount of starch enters boiling water while the pasta cooks.
If you want to try this at home, here is the recipe:
For two portions:
- Whole black pepper forces, to taste
Toast pepper pepper in a saucepan to perfume, then grind. Mix the cornstarch in water while heating until it forms a gel. Once the gel cools, combine with pecorino and the desired quantity of ground black pepper in a mixer. Boil pasta, then reserve part of the starchy water before emptying it. Mix the pasta in the source, adding pasta water if necessary until the desired consistency is reached.
How to know if your baby is a vampire
The theme of food continues! Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp received the pediatric prize, “to study what the experience of a baby nurse when the baby’s mother eats garlic”.
Why garlic? Vegetable with a mythical history of break-ups is known to produce flavors in cow’s milk and can affect body odors in humans. In the study of this team, mothers who ingested garlic capsules produced milk which had a more intense smell, which culminated at two hours. Infants whose mother ingested the garlic remained attached within longer periods.
An important application is a better understanding of how sensory experiences during breastfeeding influence how infants accept new foods once they are weaned and beyond.
Like watching dry paint – or nails grow
The price of literature was awarded to fire Dr. William B. Bean, “to constantly record and analyze the growth rate of one of his nails over a period of 35 years”. These detailed recordings of how his nails have grown was written in flower prose, referring to everything Moby Dick to medieval astrology.
His final report said: “The nail provides a Kymographer of KĂ©ratin in a slow motion which measures age on the inexorable abscissa of time.”
Dangerous intelligence
The Prix de la Psychologie went to Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac for their work “investigating what is happening when you say to the narcissics – or anyone – that they are intelligent”. The pair has explored if believing that we have superior intelligence with positive external feedback can create a temporary state of narcissism.
Unsurprisingly, they found that external comments really help to shape the perception of a test subject of their own intelligence, regardless of the precision of feedback.
Cows get their scratches
The Biology Prize Went to Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima, Naoto Aoki, Say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Ueda, Hiroyuki Hirooka, and Katsutoshi Kino, “For their experience Whether COWS PAINTED with Zebra-Like Striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
In nature, zebras are surprisingly imperturbable and not botped by flies. Unlike the cows, which must constantly escape the buzzing insects with their tail or shake around their ears. Do zebra stripes have a little power on flies? To find out, the team painted cows with black and white stripes. Their false zebras stripes have decreased the number of biting flies on cattle and cows did not have to contract as much. The team believes that something in scratches confuses the movement detection system of flies.
Add teflon to food?
Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich and Frank Greenway have received the chemistry prize: “For experiences to test if eating teflon [a form of plastic more formally called polytetrafluoroethylene] is a good way to increase the volume of food and therefore satiety without increasing the calorie content. »»
Dietary soda, flavored seltzers and other calories are popular and everywhere. But can real “zero calorie food” be developed, the way in which artificial sweeteners were? The team of this study thinks that this scientific amazed diet could be carried out by increasing the satisfactory volume and mass of a food – just without increasing calories. And Teflon could do so, despite his risks. The team claims that its inert, heat resistant, impermeable to acids which turned into our stomachs, insipids, profitable and can come powder. Their study revealed that a three -part food report to part of the teflon powder could work to get to a real zero calorie food. A reminder that this is experimental and should not be tried at home.
Liquid language courage
Low for this one. The peace prize was awarded to Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field and Jessica Werthmann, “to show that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.”
To test the idea that alcohol improves control of languages, the team recruited 50 Aboriginal German undergraduate students in the Netherlands who also sparked the Dutch. Once divided into two groups, one group had vodka with lemon and the other received ordinary water. The students of the Vodka group drank enough to become slightly intoxicated and then embarked on a conversation in Dutch. They were then asked to assess how much they thought they were talking about their non -native language, with heavy Dutch speakers.
It turns out that poisoning has improved their mastery, based on the reports of independent observers. The authors believe that poisoning helps reduce language anxiety, allowing easier discourse.
Do not drink and fly, even if you are a bat
In the same way as the peace prize, the price of aviation also calls for a round for bats. It was awarded to Francisco Sánchez, Mariana MelcĂłn, Carmi Korine and Berry Pinshow, “to study if alcohol ingestion can harm the ability of flying bats and also to their ability to resonate”.
Alcohol in the animal kingdom is not completely unknown. Some mammals, birds and insects eat fruits full of ethanol and get drunk. In this study, the team examined the bats of Egyptian fruits, which are known to avoid ethanol fruits. After eating the fruits loaded with alcohol, bats were slow and their vaculumed echolocation, similar to the way in which human speech becomes blurred. With this affection against echolocation, bats that have fought on fermented fruits could be more at risk of dangerous and fatal collisions.
Pee-Yew! These shoes feel unless you are treated with UV light
Hold your nose for this one. Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal received the engineering prize, “for the analysis, from the point of view of engineering design, how foul -smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe rack”.
This pilot study of 149 first -year students from Shiv Nadar University (SNU) in the Uttar Pradesh, India, to develop shoe support to ventilate these smelly shoes and uses UVC tube light to provide Killings UV rays as a means of reducing smell. They tested this shoe support with the shoes of several university athletes and found that the exhibition of smelly sneakers in light for two to three minutes kills bacteria causing the smell.
We here Popular science Offer warm congratulations to all the winners this year!
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