Scientists achieve recognition for experiment with alligator 0:53
(CNN) –-
A team of scientists who put an alligator in a space filled with helium and made it scream won the Ig Nobel Prize, an award with some prestige that commemorates the least orthodox experiments in the scientific world.
The group, led by researchers from Austria and Japan, were trying to find out whether alligators' vocal communications are related to their body size, but it was their method, rather than their hypothesis, that caught the attention of the awards committee.
Another experiment, which found that narcissists can be identified by their eyebrows, was also awarded.
And the Peace Prize for the ceremony went to the governments of India and Pakistan.
They got it by "having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other's doorbell in the middle of the night and then flee before anyone had a chance to open the door."
This is a reference to an incident that supposedly took place two years ago.
Ig Nobel have been awarded since 1991 to parody the more established Nobel prizes.
This year's ceremony, which took place on Thursday, was streamed over the Internet due to the pandemic.
The economics award went to an international team of experts for "trying to quantify the relationship between national income inequality in different countries and the average number of mouth-to-mouth kisses."
American Richard Vetter won the Entomology Prize for "collecting evidence that many entomologists fear spiders, that they are not insects."
Entomologists are precisely the scientists who study insects.
Ig Nobel, awards for achievements 'that make you laugh and then think'
A Dutch-Belgian team won the Medicine award.
The researchers were able to "diagnose a long-unrecognized medical condition: misophonia, the anguish of hearing other people make sounds when chewing."
"The Ig Nobel prizes recognize achievements that make people laugh and then think," write the award organizers on their website.
The winners accept their awards from "genuinely puzzled Nobel laureates," the website says.
This year, six Nobel winners distributed the trophies.
US President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro won the "Medical Education Award," along with a handful of other world leaders.
They got it for using the pandemic to teach the world that "politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can," a not-so-subtle hint about the handling of these politicians of the coronavirus crisis.
Thursday's ceremony marked the 30th edition of the awards, which are generally held at Harvard University.