mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
September 2025, issue number 2025-09. ISSN 1076-500X.
improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
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01 The Number Before Two (2)
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Motion
03 Impending Move to a New Magazine Subscription Processor
04 Two-Faced Public Attitudes Towards Snakes
05 The 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Tolerance of Amphibians in Slovakian People
07 Are-Economists-Selfish? Winner
08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Pasta, World's End, Stingrays
09 Do Animals Have Religion?
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
This little newsletter you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR) is overflow detritus from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Motion
The special MOTION issue (vol. 31, no. 5) has gone out to subscribers, some of whom are deeply moved by the articles therein.
See the TOC and several articles online at
https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-september-october-2025-vol-31-number-5/
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!): gumroad.com/improbable
Tables of Contents: improbable.com/magazine-2/
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03 Impending Move to a New Magazine Subscription Processor
If you are a subscriber to the magazine (not just to mini-AIR, which is what you are reading at this moment), you may have noticed and suffered from the deepening technical woes of the company we have been using the past ten years to process and distribute the magazine subscriptions.
THE WOES: That company seems to now exist almost entirely of an owner and a so-called "artificial intelligence [AI]" program. That AI program has produced many kinds of exciting adventures for us and for many of you: wrong prices, mistaken non-renewals, wrong this, wrong that..., and super-exciting weird interactions whenever we have tried (and during the past year almost always failed) to awaken them to problems.
THE GOOD NEWS: We are in the process of moving the magazine subscription-handling to a different company, one that is staffed by human beings.
If you are a subscriber, we will keep you posted when the move is imminent. Thank you (we are sorry to have to say so many times, here in the vexed year 2025) for your patience!
[If your subscribed PDF copy of the Sept/Oct issue (vol, 31, no 5, the special MOTION issue) has NOT arrived, please email us at: digruntled@improbable.com ]
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04 Two-Faced Public Attitudes Towards Snakes
This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:
"The Two Faces of Janus, or the Dual Mode of Public Attitudes Towards Snakes," Vasilios Liordos, Vasileios J. Kontsiotis, Spyridon Kokoris, and Michaela Pimenidou, Science of the Total Environment, vol. 621, 2018, pp. 670-678.
doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.311
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05 The 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners
Ten new prizes were awarded at the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, on September 18, 2025.
The ceremony happened on September 18, at Boston University.
DETAILS (including recorded video) of the ceremony, and who what was part of it:
improbable.com/the-35th-first-annual-ig-nobel-prize-ceremony/
This year brought new difficulties in producing the ceremony. Nearly half of the winners did not travel to be physically part of it; instead their acceptance speeches were read on stage by Nobel laureates. Some details about that here: https://improbable.com/2025/09/19/the-added-difficulty-of-producing-the-ig-nobel-prize-ceremony-in-2025/
The winners:
[citations and other detail: https://improbable.com/ig/winners/ ]
LITERATURE PRIZE [USA]
The late Dr. William B. Bean, for persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Bennett Bean (William B. Bean’s son)
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, AUSTRALIA, CANADA]
Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac, for investigating what happens when you tell narcissists — or anyone else — that they are intelligent.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac
NUTRITION PRIZE [NIGERIA, TOGO, ITALY, FRANCE]
Daniele Dendi, Gabriel H. Segniagbeto, Roger Meek, and Luca Luiselli, for studying the extent to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat certain kinds of pizza.
PEDIATRICS PRIZE [USA]
Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp, for studying what a nursing baby experiences when the baby’s mother eats garlic.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp
BIOLOGY PRIZE [JAPAN]
Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima, Naoto Aoki, Say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Ueda, Hiroyuki Hirooka, and Katsutoshi Kino, for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra-like striping can avoid being bitten by flies.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Say Sato
CHEMISTRY PRIZE [USA, ISRAEL]
Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich, and Frank Greenway, for experiments to test whether eating Teflon [a form of plastic more formally called “polytetrafluoroethylene”] is a good way to increase food volume and hence satiety without increasing calorie content.
PEACE PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, UK, GERMANY]
Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field, and Jessica Werthmann, for showing that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person’s ability to speak in a foreign language.
ENGINEERING DESIGN PRIZE [INDIA]
Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal, for analyzing, from an engineering design perspective, how foul-smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe-rack.
AVIATION PRIZE [COLOMBIA, ISRAEL ARGENTINA, GERMANY, UK, ITALY, USA, PORTUGAL, SPAIN]
Francisco Sánchez, Mariana Melcón, Carmi Korine, and Berry Pinshow, for studying whether ingesting alcohol can impair bats’ ability to fly and also their ability to echolocate.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Francisco Sánchez
PHYSICS PRIZE [ITALY, SPAIN, GERMANY, AUSTRIA]
Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti, for discoveries about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause of unpleasantness.
WHO ATTENDED THE CEREMONY: Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas, and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti
Winners will gather in the coming months, at public events, to discuss their work, in Ig Nobel Face-to-Face events.
Ig Nobel Face-to-Face events will happen in:
LONDON UK (Oct 31)
BERLIN, GERMANY (First week of Nov, date TBA)
TOKYO, JAPAN (Jan, date TBA)
(There is a *possibility* also of an event in Paris.)
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06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Tolerance of Amphibians in Slovakian People
This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
"Tolerance of Amphibians in Slovakian People: A Comparison of Pond Owners and Non-Owners," Pavol Prokop and Jana Fančovičová, Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People and Animals, vol. 25, no. 3, September 2012 , pp. 277-288.
doi.org/10.2752/175303712X13403555186136
The authors explain:
"Here we investigated tolerance of amphibians by interviewing a convenience sample of 201 pond owners and non-owners of various ages in Slovakia. Tolerance of tadpoles was higher than tolerance of adult amphibians…. We found that tolerance of amphibians was positively correlated with perceived importance of amphibians and negatively correlated with a disgust reaction to amphibians."
Send your perfictly formed, perfectly pleasing limerick to:
AMPHIBIANISTS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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07 Are-Economists-Selfish? Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
"Are Economists More Selfish Than Other 'Social' Scientists?" David N. Laband and Richard O. Beil, Public Choice, vol. 100, nos. 1999, 85-101.
doi.org/10.1023/A:1018370625789
Winning limerickicist JOEY SCHOOLCRAFT writes:
Yes, let's ponder just what is the worth
Of studies (of which there's no dearth)
that manage to show
that economists know
that at heart they are quite down-to-earth.
This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
Social scientists categorize
Social scientists. One group of guys
Doesn't cheat, but there's two
(Not the authors) who do,
Showing not just who cheats, but who lies.
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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Pasta, World's End, Stingrays
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...
BLOG (improbable.com):
• How to Become Famous Physicists: Pasta
• Predicting the End of the World
• Always Chew Your Food: When Stingrays Eat Tough Insects
• …and much more
SUBSTACK: (improbablestuff.substack.com)
MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science
FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch
PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch
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09 Do Animals Have Religion?
This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:
"Do Animals Have Religion? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religion and Embodiment," Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People and Animals, vol. 25, Supplement 1, August 2012 , pp. 173-189.
doi.org/10.2752/175303712X13353430377291
The authors explain:
"Ultimately... the study of animal religion must proceed by thinking along two lines of recurring themes found throughout these accounts: the differences between animal bodies (what Jacques Derrida calls the "heterogeneous multiplicity" of animals) and the orientation of religious bodies to affect. Rather than thinking of religion as one thing, we must conceive of religion as multiple, corresponding to the multiplicity of embodied lifeways found among animals."
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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.
SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!
improbable.com/magazine-2/
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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, London, UK — Oct 31, 2025
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, Berlin, GERMANY — date TBA
· Falling Walls, Berlin, GERMANY — Nov 2025
· Monell Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA — Nov 12, 2025
· Royal Society Club, London, UK — Nov 27, 2025
· Science Friday Ig Radio Special — Nov 28, 2025
· Ig Nobel Face-to-Face, Tokyo, JAPAN, Jan, 2026
· Arisia, Cambridge, MA, USA — Jan 2026
· AAAS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, USA — Feb 2026
· Ig Nobel EuroTour — Spring 2026
For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/
If your institution would like to host an event,
please get in touch with us at:
MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
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30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine,
in PDF form. It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.
improbable.com/publications/magazine
SUBSCRIPTIONS ($40 for six issues)
BACK ISSUES ($8 each)
(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating quasi-appendix to the actual magazine.)
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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)
This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR, see the links at the end of this email.
ARCHIVES: improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
improbable.com
EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com
Cambridge, MA, USA
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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2025, Improbable Research
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