"Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain" is the title of a scientific study written by Charles Paxton and three colleagues. In 2002, when I informed Paxton that his team would be awarded that year’s Ig Nobel biology prize, he took the news matter-of-factly. "I’m not surprised to be getting this telephone call," he said, "but I expected that if I ever won an Ig Nobel prize, it would be for my work with sea monsters"…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian