The Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research magazine last week at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the winners' achievements in science this year are rather incredible.
Every year, the magazine celebrates the most bizarre and unusual advancements to scientific research, and 2014 has seen some rather barmy eureka moments.
Here's this year's winners:
1. Physics
Japanese researchers who measured the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
(GIF: Reddit)
2: Neuroscience
Chinese and Canadian researchers for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.
(Image: Imgur)
3: Psychology
Australian, American and British academics who proved that people who usually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who usually arise early in the morning.
(Image: Imgur)
4: Public Health
Shared between the Czech Republic, USA, Japan and India, who investigated whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.
(GIF: Tumblr)
5: Biology
Czech, German and Zambian boffins for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.
(Image: BringFido)
6: Art
An Italian team that measured the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot (in the hand) by a powerful laser beam.
(Image: Wikipedia Commons)
7: Economics
Awarded to the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.
(GIF: Cheezburger)
8: Medicine
American and Indian researchers who treated 'uncontrollable' nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.
(GIF: Gifbay)
9: Arctic Science
Norwegian, German, American and Canadian researchers who tested how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.
(Image: Imgur)
10: Nutrition
Spanish researchers for determining how sausage meat could be cured using bacteria from baby faeces.
(GIF: Reddit)
Many of the researchers turned up to collect their awards, and you can watch the entire ceremony over on the YouTube. Congratulations to the winners for furthering science and leaving you wondering why on Earth they're bothering.
