World of the Bizarre

Fossil licking and zombie spiders among 2023's Ig Nobel Prize winners

By T.K. Randall
September 15, 2023 ·  3 comments

Not your average science prize... Image Credit: Pixabay / markmags A parody of the better-known and more prestigious Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel Prize seeks to offer recognition to those who have contributed to the world of science in more unusual ways.

The winners are typically those who have engaged in research into strange, bizarre and often ludicrous ideas and concepts and this year's recipients are no exception.

In addition to receiving recognition for their work, the winners are also awarded an almost completely useless Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill which is worth around $0.40 in US money.

Perhaps the weirdest of this year's winners was a study into the use of deceased spiders as mechanical gripping zombies - an idea that is as strange and disturbing as it sounds.To achieve this, researchers in Texas pumped the bodies of dead wolf spiders with air so that they could use the arachnids' legs as a form of lightweight robotic gripping tool.

Elsewhere, a team from the University of Southampton scooped up an award for their study into the sex lives of anchovies, while a team from France won an award for researching what happens when you repeat a word over and over again until it no longer means anything.

The chemistry and geography prize this year went to Jan Zalasiewicz who looked into the age-old art of licking fossils, while the psychology prize went to a team who investigated whether people will stop and look up at the sky if they see others doing the same thing.

The full ceremony, which is just as wacky as the prize winners themselves, can be viewed below.


Source: Mail Online | Comments (3)

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