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A WWII project which involved training pigeons to pilot bombs has won this year's spoof Nobel peace prize.
The annual Ig Nobel awards recognise scientific discoveries that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'.
They are awarded by the science humour magazine the Annals of Improbable Research, which 'celebrates the unusual and honours the imaginative'.
Professor Burrhus Frederic Skinner, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota in the US, received the posthumous gong for his work on Project Pigeon, where he was able to teach pigeons to guide missiles with some success during the Second World War.
But the project never took flight because of scepticism from the US military and government officials.
A bizarre World War II project to teach pigeons how to pilot guided missiles is the winner of this years' spoof 'Ig Nobel' Awards. Pictured: A proposed three-pigeon steering system
American psuchologis BF Skinner was awarded a posthumous Ig Nobel Peace Prize for his proposals to build a device which could use pigeons as tracking devices inside missiles
What are the Ig Nobel Awards?
The Ig Nobel Prize is a spoof award run by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
It was first awarded in 1991 to celebrate 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research.
The aim is to 'honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.'
The name of the award is a pun on the Nobel Prize, which it parodies, and on the word ignoble (not noble).
The anatomy prize went to a team of scientists in France who wanted to investigate whether hair on the heads of most people in the Northern Hemisphere swirled in the same direction – clockwise or anticlockwise – as those from the Southern Hemisphere.
Study author Khonsari Roman, professor of maxillofacial surgery at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris, said: 'As a whole, clockwise whorl are considerably more common all over the world.
'Nevertheless, counter-clockwise whorls seem to be more prevalent in the Southern Hemisphere.'
The chemistry award was won by a research team who used a lab technique to separate drunk and sober worms.
Meanwhile US-based scientists Fordyce Ely and William E Petersen were awarded the biology prize for exploding a paper bag next to a cat standing on the back of a cow with aim to understand more about how and when cows spew their milk.
The two found that cows temporarily stopped ejecting milk when frightened.
One team of Japanese researchers were awarded the prize of physiology by proving that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus. Pictured: an illustration from the paper on the subject
One group of researchers found that while clockwise hair swirls are more common, counter-clockwise whorls are more prevelant in the southern hemisphere (stock image)
One group of researchers demonstrated that flipping a coin is not fair since the coin is slightly more likely to land the same way up as it started (stock image)
An international team of scientists led by academics in Germany picked up the prize for probability, which involved more than 350,000 coin-flipping experiments totalling 650 hours and using 44 different currencies.
The team found that when people flip a coin it 'wobbles' in the air, making it more likely to land on the same side it started.
Other awards presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston yesterday included the physiology prize for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus and the physics prize for demonstrating the swimming capabilities of a dead trout.
Stanford mathematician Persi Diaconis, first realised that coin flips were not random after he and his colleagues managed to rig a coin-flipping machine to get a coin to land heads every time (pictured)
The winners of the botany award received their prize for showing that some real plants will try to imitate the shapes of nearby plastic plants
One group of researchers towed dead trout through turbulent water to see how they 'swam' and were awarded the physics prize for their efforts
The demography gong went to Dr Saul Justin Newman, senior research fellow at University College London, who discovered some people with the longest lives hailed from places that had poor recordkeeping.
The botany prize was handed to researchers who found evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighbouring artificial plastic plants.
And the medicine prize went to a team who demonstrated that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.
The theme of this year's Ig Nobel ceremony was Murphy's Law – the idea that 'if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong'.
The new winners were handed prizes by genuine Nobel laureates, before being pelted by paper airplanes as per tradition.
Full list of 2024 winners of the Ig-Nobel Prize
Peace Prize
B.F Skinner for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.
Botany Prize
Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants.
Anatomy Prize
Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari, for studying whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere.
Medicine Prize
Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.
Physics Prize
James C. Liao, for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
Physiology Prize
Ryo Okabe, Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson, Gokul Kannan, Eiji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe, for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.
Probability Prize
František Bartoš, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Henrik Godmann, and many colleagues, for showing, both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side it started.
Chemistry Prize
Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen, for using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.
Demography Prize
Saul Justin Newman, for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.
Biology Prize
Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.
