A highlight from the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony [AIR 15:6]:
Biology Prize acceptance speech [for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas]
Fumiaki Taguchi:
“Chair, respectable Nobel Laureates, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen: Firstly, let me tell you that I owe my being here today to two important buddies of my career. They are the giant panda and their feces. Pandas’ feces don’t look like usual animal feces. Stems or leaves of the main diet bamboo are excreted almost undigested, with no stinking smell!, which is good for handling. Without the panda and their feces, I would never have thought of finding useful bacteria of great potentiality that can help us conserve the global environment, nor had an honor of being selected for this amusing prize. So on behalf of them and myself, thank you so very much.”