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FEEDBACK鈥橲 favourite prizes, the Ig Nobels, were handed out on 29 September at Harvard University鈥檚 Sanders Theater. They honour research which makes you laugh, and then think, ranging from studying contagious yawning? or the lack of it? in tortoises, to understanding the nature of procrastination and the mathematical risks of prophecies of doom.
Yawning can be contagious, not just in humans but also in other primates. Reading about yawning can make you yawn, which is why you鈥檙e probably thinking of yawning right now. The same is true for writing about it, and for Anna Wilkinson of the University of Lincoln, UK, that made it exhausting to write the paper that won her the Ig Nobel physiology prize: 鈥淣o evidence of contagious yawning in the red-footed tortoise Geochelone carbonaria鈥� (Current Zoology, vol聽57, p聽477). Wilkinson shares the prize with co-authors Natalie Sebanz, Isabella Mandl and Ludwig Huber from the Messerli Institute in Vienna, Austria.
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The cause of contagious yawning is a mystery, but Wilkinson didn鈥檛 believe one leading theory? that empathy was involved. After years spent studying the behaviour of tortoises, she thought they could disprove the theory. 鈥淚 was totally convinced that tortoises would yawn contagiously,鈥� she says. She spent six months training one tortoise to yawn, and when she finally succeeded, she watched the response of other tortoises? or, rather, their lack of response. She tried a series of different experiments, but nothing worked. Tortoises don鈥檛 yawn contagiously.
THE literature prize went to retired Stanford University professor John Perry for his eloquent explanation of 鈥渟tructured procrastination鈥�. As he writes at , 鈥渢he procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something even more important鈥�. The logic is compelling, and we have decided it鈥檚 time to write a book so we can avoid doing that to concentrate on more achievable tasks, like editing this column.
LESS productive behaviour was the subject of the biology prize, won by Daryll Gwynne of the University of Toronto in Canada and David Rentz of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. While drinking his morning coffee during a field study in Western Australia, Gwynne noticed that male buprestid beetles had a peculiar attraction to a type of 鈥渟tubby鈥� (short-necked) brown beer bottle lying by the side of the road. There were a lot of these discarded bottles about, and nearly every one had a much smaller male beetle attempting to mate with it.
As an evolutionary biologist, Gwynne instantly recognised this as a peculiarly male behaviour. 鈥淗ere鈥檚 a male making a mating mistake,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 think of one single female example of a mating mistake.鈥� Gwynne goes on to explain that tiny dimples on the brown glass bottle are a 鈥渟uperstimulus鈥�, which means they look better than a female to the male beetle. See 鈥淏eetles on the bottle: male buprestids mistake stubbies for females (Coleptera)鈥� (Journal of the Australian Entomological Society, vol聽22, p聽79).
ORDINARY smoke alarms may wake the dead, but they can鈥檛 wake the deaf, so a Tokyo company called SEEM has been sniffing around for 鈥渇unctional alerting smells鈥� that could be squirted into the air to rouse anyone with a working nose. After testing many scents, SEEM researchers designed the wasabi alarm and determined the ideal density of wasabi spray needed to waken hearing-impaired sleepers to escape a fire. They have applied for a US patent at , for which company president Naoki Urushihata and his colleagues earned the chemistry prize.
A LONG list of self-appointed prophets whose predictions of the end of the world have thankfully failed to come to pass shared the mathematics prize. As the Ig Nobel committee says, their failure has taught 鈥渢he world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations鈥�. Among the prize winners is Harold Camping, who has so far prophesied the end of the world on 21 May 1988, 7 September 1994 and 21 May of this year, and who is now waiting for the end on 21 October. We are not holding our breath.
FINALLY, the winner of the peace prize is easily understood by anyone who has ever fumed at illegally parked cars. Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, received it for borrowing a heavily armoured military tank and driving right over one, as you can watch at . An otherwise peaceful Feedback is checking out a tank rental service, just in case, at .