Stressed frogs smell like curry or cashew nuts, and penguins generate a certain pressure when they “defecate” – these are the findings that won this year’s Ig Nobel Prize.
The 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes, which “honor” achievements that make people laugh first and think later, were announced at the awards ceremony at Harvard University in the United States on the night of October 6.
A team led by Professor Mike Tyler from the University of Adelaide, Australia, won the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology for their research on the smell of frogs. Tyler noted that each frog has a distinct smell when it is stressed.
“Most tree frogs have scents resembling peanuts or cashew nuts, and it is very sweet,” Tyler explained. Another group of frogs emits a strong curry scent. “In fact, it’s the sweet smell of Bombay curry, or the dried chili curry from North India.”
Tyler and his team also discovered 20 frogs with a fresh grass-like smell and some that emitted a rotten odor.
The researchers are unsure of the significance of these smells, but they know that some chemicals in them have mosquito-repelling properties. They also found certain chemicals that prevent pigeons from “messing” on fences, which have been used to deter birds in London, Paris, and New York.
Professor John Mainstone and the late Professor Thomas Parnell from the University of Queensland in Brisbane won the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics.
Mainstone revealed that in 1927, Parnell started an experiment that has now become the longest-running experiment in history, involving the observation of the super slow movement of droplets of pitch falling from a funnel.
This experiment aims to demonstrate that pitch, a brittle solid that can be shattered with a hammer, can eventually flow like a liquid if left alone long enough.
So far, only 8 droplets have fallen since the experiment began, and scientists will have to wait another decade for more droplets to appear.
“No one has actually observed when the pitch droplet separates from the mass in the funnel. In 2000, we thought we captured that moment on video, but unfortunately, the camera malfunctioned at that crucial moment,” Mainstone, who continues the experiment after Parnell’s passing, said.
Mainstone acknowledged that some may think their work is worse than watching grass grow or waiting for paint to dry, but he proudly stated that the experiment has been included in textbooks. He declared that he will continue collecting data on the viscosity of pitch, which is 100 billion times thicker than water.
The camera is now working again, so you can see the pitch droplet fall. But don’t hold your breath, as the next droplet won’t drop before 2011.
The Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to an American who invented fake testicles for dogs, available in three sizes and three different hardness levels.
The Chemistry Prize went to two American researchers who discovered that swimming in syrup is no slower than swimming in water.
A Japanese researcher received the Nutrition Prize for photographing and analyzing every meal he ate over a period of 34 years.
Meanwhile, German researchers won the Fluid Dynamics Prize for calculating the pressure generated inside a penguin when it defecates.
M.T. (according to ABC Online)