The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. We are releasing these lectures one at a time. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was […]
Bat Chat, the podcast produced by the Bat Conservation Trust, visited with Ig Nobel Prize winner Gareth Jones. The 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for Biology was awarded to Libiao Zhang, Min Tan, Guangjian Zhu, Jianping Ye, Tiyu Hong, Shanyi Zhou, and Shuyi Zhang of China, and Gareth Jones of the University of Bristol, UK, for […]
Biology is not all cut, not all dry, not all Disneyfied, not always at all easy to classify tidily. This paper tries to kick any intellectually recalcitrant reader into realizing that: “Endless Forms Most Stupid, Icky, and Small: The Preponderance of Noncharismatic Invertebrates as Integral to a Biologically Sound View of Life,” Jesse E. Czekanski‐Moir […]
Though tapeworms tend to live sequestered lives, those lives can be—and now have been—contemplated panoramically. Planetary Biodiversity Inventory (2008-2017): Tapeworms from Vertebrate Bowels of the Earth, compiles info about tapeworms from the bowels of many vertebrates. The book is a collaboration of Janine N. Caira [pictured here] and Kirsten Jensen, published in 2017 [University of Kansas, Natural […]
Michael C. LaBarbera some years ago applied his loving knowledge of biology to his knowledgeable love of monster movies. The result: “The Biology of B-Movie Monsters,” Michael C. LaBarbera [pictured here], Fathom, 2003. It begins thus: SESSION 1: Biology and Geometry Collide! Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially […]
Ig Nobel Prize winner David Hu researches many questions that involve biology AND mathematics AND physics. And often, fluid dynamics. In this video, he confides, concisely, some of the biophysical ways that ants survive perilous, quickly-changing physical conditions: The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Patricia Yang [USA and TAIWAN], David Hu [USA and TAIWAN], and […]
Marcus Byrne tells about the dung-beetles-and-the-Milky-Way research that led to an Ig Nobel Prize for him and his colleagues, in this University of the Witwatersrand video: That Ig Nobel Prize was awarded, in 2013, jointly in the fields of biology and astronomy, to Marie Dacke [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA], Emily Baird [SWEDEN, AUSTRALIA, GERMANY], Marcus Byrne [SOUTH AFRICA, UK], […]
A new opera, called “The Best Life“, will premiere next week — as part of the Twenty-Fifth 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. Here’s the story line of “The Best Life“, as explained in the program that will be handed to all 1100 audience members in Harvard’s Sanders Theatre: The story: It’s the day before the greatest competition […]
The name is alcon. Maculinea alcon. Like a suave British superspy, or maybe even a trojan horse or the proverbial cute abandoned baby left on a doorstep, some butterfly larvae mimic the chemicals of ants to get worker ants to bring them home to the nest. But that’s not all: as Francesca Barbero and Luca […]
For several years, people have been able to experience the joys of plush microbes (these are awesome), plush subatomic particles, and even plush statistical distributions. Well, for people who are more into anatomy — or who want a soft way of learning about it — you can also get plush versions of dissected animals (and […]