Every year, I write about the Ig Nobel Prizes, which is a real ceremony that hands out awards for scientific studies that at first seem ridiculous, but then when you think about them, seem obvious.
Like for example, take the Public Health prize of 2014, which went to a bunch of researchers for investigating whether having multiple cats is a sign of deteriorating mental health. Basically, there are a lot of times that scientists come up with these things, and you think, “Duh!” But it’s not duh, because scientists don’t get to figure things out the way you figure things out. They don’t get to say things like, “Well, based on the people who daven in my shul…” They have to do the work with a control group and a placebo group, and they have to publish a whole paper. It just happens to be that the result they end up with is the obvious one.
For example, the Biology prize this year went to Suzanne Schötz of Sweden, who studied her multiple cats to figure out how they were communicating with her. Or, in the words of the Ig Nobel Prize committee, “for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweeting, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, and other modes of cat-human communication.”
I didn’t even know there were multiple sounds. I thought it was just meow. (Source: kindergarten.)
In fact, everyone says that the sound a cat makes is meow, but if you think about it, that’s ridiculous. That’s like saying that the sound a human makes is hello. Maybe if we continue a conversation with them, they make other sounds.
And actually, I heard somewhere that cats only meow around humans. Which is weird, because we only meow around cats. It’s like this third bridging language that neither of us speaks. Like the cats say afterward, “I wonder what meow means.” Some cat accidentally said, “Meow,” once, and now humans say, “Meow,” because they heard from other humans that this is what cats say, and cats repeat it.
Anyway, Suzanne says that that it’s not just about the noises. For example, purring can mean the cat is content, but it can also mean it’s afraid or stressed, even though it’s making the same noise. So you have to also look at context and body language, and figure it out yourself. So basically it’s like having a wife.
The Ecology prize this year went to researchers in Spain and Iran, for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in five different countries.
That whole sentence is nasty.
What they learned is that people in every country, regardless of genetics, leave gum on sidewalks, and that’s gross. Why is this a universal thing? Five countries!
So the researchers collected bacteria from discarded chewing gum over the course of 3 months, using chisels, and monitored how it changed over time. And the conclusion they came to was that they had to lie down.
Anyway, they found that over the course of a few weeks, the kinds of microbes found in recently-chewed gum give way to microbes found in the surrounding environment.
STUDY BENEFITS: Archeology. But not yet.
Also, according to them, “This research can be applied in forensic medicine or for the control of contagious diseases.” Like if a new worldwide pandemic comes out, scientists can say, “Don’t put that gum in your mouth. The bacteria stays on for weeks.” And everyone else can say, “Scientists don’t know what they’re talking about! It’s a new virus!”
But not every study is as obvious as it seems. The Transportation prize this year went to a team of scientists in Africa “for determining by experiment whether it’s safer to airlift a rhinoceros upside-down.”
Safer for whom?
Okay, some background: Basically, there’s this species of rhinos that’s facing serious threats to its population, so the African governments have taken to occasionally relocating them to other regions. Now if they can, they drive them around in one of those horse carriers. The problem is that most of these rhino herds are out in middle of nowhere. Rhinos don’t specifically build their societies in places that are convenient to the highway.
So the governments get a helicopter with a long rope underneath, and they use that to carry the rhinos around, one at a time, and the benefit is that when the rhino freaks out, it’s at the bottom of this rope so there’s really not much it can do. But just in case, they tranquilize it. They also fit it with transmitter chips, “So conservationists can monitor its welfare at its new location.” But mostly I think it’s in case they drop it.
This is all a very expensive process, because they actually need two helicopters. First they need a small helicopter to chase the rhino and shoot tranquilizers at it. And then you need a second helicopter that’s able to lift this rhino, because the smaller helicopter cannot. And helicopters charge by the hour apparently.
So originally, they were lifting each rhino on a pallet. This takes time, because you have to lay it down perfectly, and it takes 12 guys, and you have to daven that the rhino doesn’t wake up in middle. So what they’ve been doing recently is that they tie 4 ropes to its legs and they tell the helicopter to fly upwards really fast, and they hope the rhino flips over and doesn’t just do a split.
And after 10 years of doing this, the scientists said, “Hey, should we maybe just make sure that doing this is better for the rhinos and not just for the people?” Because the government said, “Who cares? The rhinos aren’t paying for the helicopters.”
So what they did was they suspended 12 rhinos upside down about 5 feet from the ground and ran some tests, and they concluded that it actually is better to transport them upside down.
STUDY BENEFITS: These are obvious. According to a doctor who worked on the study, “This has really changed rhino translocation. The next thing we’ve got to do is some research on other species, like buffalo, hippo, and maybe even giraffe.”
I would also say we should see if this works the same for humans. It has to be better than the way we’re currently flying. Though harder to put on a tallis in middle of the flight.
And here’s another that’s not so obvious: The Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year went to researchers David Carrier, Ethan Beseris, and Steven Naleway for testing their hypothesis that beards were created to protect people from punches to the face.
Which could explain why it’s men who have beards. It also might explain why we’re told not to shave during periods of increased sinas chinam.
Personally, I thought the purpose of beards was to help people think. In my experience, people with beards seem to fight less. But maybe that’s because other people don’t want to start up.
Though it would explain why Esav was such a hairy dude.
To test this theory, the researchers continuously punched each other both with and without beards.
Just kidding. They punched sheep instead. Not real sheep. They created a synthetic human bone structure and covered it in sheepskin. Then – because the only way to guarantee that the hit would be the same every time was to use gravity – they dropped rhinos on it.
Anyway, what they found was that a beard absorbs 37% of the force of the blow, provided your beard is made of sheepskin.
Beards: They’re not just for bookmarks anymore.
Carrier now wonders whether beards might also act as visual obscurants, making it harder to target the jaw in a fistfight. Also, in some cases, the stomach.
Then we have the Physics prize, which went to scientists in the Netherlands, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not constantly collide with other pedestrians. Except when they’re working in the kitchen. And at weddings.
I mean we’re trying not to. Is that something? We contort ourselves at the last minute – we lift our arm and bend part of our body inwards and go, “Whoa!” Does that answer the question?
But people are everywhere. Like literally everywhere you go, there’s people. So how do they avoid bumping into each other? You don’t constantly hear reports of pedestrian crashes on the news. So these guys set out to figure that out.
STUDY BENEFIT: If they figure this out, you can run with scissors!
Basically, after setting up cameras in a train station for six months, they found that people continuously adjust their trajectory as they encounter oncoming pedestrians, until they encounter that one person who you move left and he moves right, and then you move right and he moves left, and then you both stand still hoping the other will move, and then you both move again. But you’re not crashing.
Anyway, you’d think this study would be obvious, but it’s not, because of our final study today – the Kinetics prize, which went to scientists in Japan and Switzerland for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes collide with other pedestrians.
Is it phone related? I bet it’s phone related.
Basically, these two studies were coming from opposite directions, and they bumped into each other, at the Ig Nobels.
Basically, they found, avoiding other people is about what they call “mutual anticipation”, where both people see what’s coming and they both take steps to avoid it. Though to me, “mutual anticipation” sounds like you’re both looking forward to colliding. Which only really seems to be true during that Se’u She’arim dance on Simchas Torah.
“From our experiment,” they said, “we realized that people in a two-way-flow pedestrian situation exchange implicit messages to let others know which direction they want to move in. However, it is still not completely clear how this message is communicated.”
Is it meowing?
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
