UK MAN WHO LIVED IN THE ALPS AS A GOAT WINS ‘IG NOBEL’

NEW YORK: A man who lived as a goat in the Alps and a scientist who studied how pants affect the sex drive of rodents are among this year’s spoof Nobel prizes.

The 26th edition of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which celebrate the silly side of science, were handed out on Thursday at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The prizes aim to “celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology,” organisers said of the event, which featured a traditional onstage paper airplane toss.

The top honour in the reproduction category went to the late Ahmed Shafik from Cairo University, who died in 2007, for his work that showed how the sex lives of rats are affected by the fabric of pants they are fitted with. Published in 1993, the study said rats who wear polyester have less sex than those who don cotton or wool.

The biology prize went jointly to Charles Foster, who lived in the wild several times as animals including a badger, an otter and a bird, and to Thomas Thwaites, who constructed prosthetic legs so he could live three days on all fours and roam the hills with goats. The winners received a trophy in the likeness of a large clock and $10 trillion in cash prizes in essentially worthless, inflation-ravaged Zimbabwean money.

Like every year, the awards were presented by real Nobel laureates, with four attending the ceremony. Two New Zealanders and a Briton took the economics category for their work on the personalities of rocks, studying “brand personality” by letting students label the stones with human characteristics.

THE 26TH EDITION OF THE IG NOBEL PRIZES, WHICH CELEBRATE THE SILLY SIDE OF SCIENCE, WERE HANDED OUT ON THURSDAY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY