Adding garlic flavor to breast milk and painting zebras on cows. This year's Ig Nobel Prizes are really full of quirks!

After living for so long, I've finally reached today. The first Ig Nobel Prize, which my buddy watches every year, is back again!

This year marks the 35th "first" edition! That's right, it's always the "first" every year, just like how you always say each late - night stay - up is the last one. It's quite reassuring.

Previously, amazing scientists from around the world have presented memorable scenes like breathing through the anus and alcohol enema. This year, I can only say, it still has a strong "flavor", no need for further words.

Without further ado, let's directly announce the awards.

As usual, the winners would get a huge - denomination Zimbabwean dollar note worth one hundred trillion (equivalent to just a few cents in RMB). But this year, the organizers shrugged and said the price of these notes has skyrocketed, and they can't afford them anymore..

So this year's prize has been changed to a -

Wet wipe.

Not to mention anything else, the practicality of the prize has been significantly improved. Congratulations!

Now, let's take a look at which astonishing studies deserve this precious wet wipe.

Literature Prize: I've Observed My Nails for 35 Years

The winner of this prize is William B Bean. Starting from the age of 32, for 35 consecutive years, he consistently made marks on his left - hand thumb to measure how fast his nails grew.

You heard it right, it was a full 35 years, and in nearly 450 months, he only forgot twice. I can only say that with this kind of perseverance, one can succeed in anything..

Thanks to his efforts, he discovered an astonishing secret: As people get older, their nails grow more slowly. Specifically, the growth rate dropped from 0.123 millimeters per day in youth to 0.095 millimeters per day at the age of 67.

Is time a butcher's knife? No, time is a nail clipper.

He also incidentally found that a serious illness (such as the mumps he had) can slow down nail growth, while people who bite their nails actually have nails that grow 20% faster than normal.

But many of my friends must be very confused: What does this have to do with literature?

I can only say that the writing of this article is excellent. For example, in the paper, he mentioned his original intention for recording nail growth:

This is a very long - term record of the growth of human exfoliated tissues, and its duration is rarely preceded in clinical medicine or the natural history of humans.

However, nails provide a slowly - moving keratin recorder, measuring age on the unrelenting horizontal axis of time.

Biology Prize: Cows Disguised as Zebras

This year's Biology Prize was awarded to the Japanese again. It's worth mentioning that Japan has won the Ig Nobel Prize for 19 consecutive years. Their comedic talent is truly remarkable.

This time, they did something amazing: They painted cows to look like zebras and found that this could prevent fly bites.

The reason is that cattle farmers hate it when cows are bitten by flies because it may spread diseases, so they asked these Japanese researchers for help. The researchers suddenly thought that someone had studied that zebras evolved their stripes to prevent fly bites.

So, they found several pure - black Japanese Wagyu cows and seriously painted black - and - white stripes on them, making it seem like a cosplay party in the cattle world.

For scientific rigor, they also set up control groups with cows that only had black stripes painted or no stripes at all.

As a result, the cows painted to look like zebras had significantly fewer flies landing on them and flicked their tails to drive away flies less often than normal cows.

The funniest part is that when they went to the award ceremony, they also wore zebra - striped clothes and even brought a few flies with them. They were really immersed in their "art".

So, Honor of Kings didn't lie to me. Skins do have attribute bonuses. I mean, is there any potential in selling zebra - striped pajamas next summer?

Pediatrics Prize: Garlic - Flavored Breast Milk

I know many people don't like garlic - flavored things, like the zombies in "Plants vs. Zombies".

But these researchers insisted on studying whether babies like garlic. So they asked eight breastfeeding mothers to take garlic capsules and then breastfed their babies to observe their reactions.

Some people may ask, can eating garlic affect the taste of breast milk? Of course.

For the sake of rigor, they also established a "breast milk evaluation group" composed of adults to evaluate the odor of breast milk samples. They found that the odor intensity of breast milk reached its peak two hours after the mother ingested garlic.

The babies' behavior also confirmed that they noticed this change. During the period when the breast milk had a garlic flavor, the babies showed a better appetite, sucked for a longer time, and sucked more frequently.

So, friends who are taking care of babies and are worried about their babies not eating enough can try eating more garlic. It's science. By the way, should milk tea shops consider making garlic - flavored milk tea?

Chemistry Prize: Losing Weight by Eating Non - Stick Coating

People have become extremely competitive in the pursuit of weight loss. They say everything is zero - calorie and start deceiving themselves.

Now, scientists have proposed a solution: Add polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon) powder to food, and you can lose weight while eating. This stuff is the same as the coating on your non - stick pan.

The logic of these researchers is as follows: The stomach is actually quite simple. It mainly judges whether you are full based on volume and weight, not calories.

In that case, as long as we mix a calorie - free and heavy filler into food, we can easily deceive it.

So they found that Teflon is the perfect material for this purpose. It can withstand stomach acid, has no taste, slides smoothly through your intestines, and most importantly, it is extremely stable and is not absorbed by the body at all. It comes out exactly the same as it went in, even more so than enoki mushrooms.

They actually conducted an experiment on mice. In a 90 - day experiment, scientists fed rats with feed that was 25% Teflon powder. As a result, the rats were fine and even lost weight..

Yes, they even made the recipe public. A ratio of 3:1 for food to Teflon powder is sufficient.

I know some of my friends are a bit tempted. I can only warn everyone that no one has ever said that this stuff is harmless to humans. You may not be as tough as a mouse.

There are many other absurd studies. I've just picked a few of the most amazing ones to elaborate on. For example, a group of Italian researchers found that lizards only eat pizza with four types of cheese and ignore other pizzas. They have quite good taste.

This year's Peace Prize winner discovered that drinking alcohol can sometimes improve people's ability to speak foreign languages. I really understand this. Last time, I went drinking with an introverted friend. After he got drunk, he spoke a foreign language for half an hour. It felt like he had drunk real imported alcohol..

Generally speaking, although scientists sometimes come up with studies that make you question life, if you think carefully, there is actually some sense behind them.

Whether it's painting cows to look like zebras or studying garlic - flavored breast milk, they are actually exploring serious scientific issues such as agricultural production and human physiology from a unique perspective.

They are not just telling jokes. Although the research process is quite funny, the value of scientific research is real.

So, while you laugh, don't forget our motto - Make people laugh out loud and then think.

This article is from the WeChat official account "ChaPingX.PIN". Author: Bu Gu, Editor: Jiang Jiang & Mian Xian. Republished by 36Kr with permission.