Striping cows through painting may reduce fly bites, according to a study that earned researchers an Ig Nobel Prize.
In an unexpected turn of events, a Japanese research team has been awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for their comical scientific achievement. The team, led by Tomoki Kojima, was honoured at the 35th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in Boston for their biology research showing that painting dairy cows with zebra-like stripes using water-based paint repels blood-feeding flies. Their findings suggest that this method could be an alternative to insecticides, benefiting animal welfare, human health, and the environment. By painting tape and spray-painting white stripes on Japanese beef cows, the researchers were able to reduce fly bites by about 50% compared to unpainted cows or cows painted with black stripes. The Ig Nobel Prizes, organised by the Annals of Improbable Research, celebrate all discoveries, both great and seemingly worthless, at first glance. Winners were expected to be pelted with paper airplanes and feted by actual Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Eric Maskin. Duflo won the Nobel Prize for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty, and Maskin for laying the foundations of mechanism design theory. The ceremony for the Ig Nobel prize winners was planned for Thursday night at Boston University. Alongside the Japanese research team, other winners included a group from India who studied whether foul-smelling shoes influenced someone's experience using a shoe rack, a group from Europe who found that drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak a foreign language, and a study from a team of international scientists looking at whether giving alcohol to bats impaired their ability to fly. Tomoki Kojima, a member of the Japanese research team, admitted it might be a challenge to apply this approach on a large-scale. However, the potential benefits for both animal welfare and the environment make this an intriguing area for further research. The Ig Nobel Prizes honour research that makes people laugh and then think, and this year's ceremony was no exception. Alongside the main awards, a mini-opera about gastroenterologists and their patients, inspired by this year's theme which is digestion, was also planned. In a poignant moment, a dead researcher who spent 35 years studying fingernail growth received an award posthumously. The Ig Nobel Prizes are usually held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced, providing a humorous prelude to the prestigious awards. The ceremony serves as a reminder that even the most seemingly ridiculous research can lead to groundbreaking discoveries.
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