There is a website that the Guardian Online is currently highlighting, called the Annals of Improbable Research. Each year it hosts the Ig Nobel awards, prizes given for ‘that [which] first makes people LAUGH, then makes them THINK’. According to the AIR website, ‘Each year, ten Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded. The selection criterion is simple. The prizes are for “achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced.” Examine that phrase carefully. It covers a lot of ground. It says nothing as to whether a thing is good or bad, commendable or pernicious.’
These caught my eye, and I just wanted to share with you some of the recent winners and nominees.
The Farting Herrings: a group of scientists in Canada and Scotland found out that at night, herrings make an odd rasping noise, accompanied by bubbles coming out of their anuses. As they seem to release more bubbles the more fish are in proximity to each other, it was posited that it was a night time communication method, with light being the day time equivalent. It was found that the gas was not flatulent, so it can’t really be called farting. But interestingly, a Swedish team had also been investigating the phenomenon – instigated by their navy hearing unidentified noises which it thought could be Russian submarines.
Homosexual Necrophilia in the animal kingdom: Dutch researcher Kees Moeliker, investigating the phenomenon of homosexuality, and rape patterns of mallards, recorded a 75 minute incident of one mallard copulating with the corpse of another while pecking its head. It stopped twice for short breaks, and made a ‘raeb-raeb’ distress sound when the researcher intervened and removed the corpse, placing it in the freezer. Prior to this, it was thought the only necrophiliac incident recorded amongst animals was in America, where a squirrel copulated with a mate which had been run over. However since Moeliker’s research was reported, another David Cronenberg incident has came to light, of a pigeon which alighted on a dead ‘mate’ after it had been run over, and ‘engaged in vigorous copulatory movements’ according to a 1987 report in the journal British Birds.
Sexuality and yawning: another Dutch academic, Wolter Seuntjens, claims that there is no physical explanation for yawning, and cites a couple who argue that the acme of yawning is a ‘mini orgasm’. He goes on to draw parallels between yawning and: spontaneous ejaculation in terminal rabies; spontaneous orgasm in cases of heroin withdrawal; sexual response in cases of anti depressant use.
Scrotal asymmetry: unlike the most common representations by ancient Greek sculptors, which show the right testicle higher and the left larger, the right human testicle is in fact both larger (by about 6.3%) and higher (by over 60%).
And my personal favourite –
Country music and suicide: two American academics published their report ‘Country music and suicide’ which shows that regardless of such factors as poverty, divorce, gun availability and ’southerness’, the greater the airtime devoted to country music in metropolitan areas, the higher the white suicide rate. They contend that ‘themes found in country music foster a suicidal mood among people already at risk of suicide’.