Shucking Oysters: Assessing Soil Health with Underpants
By Alex Allen
It’s that time of year again; the annual Ig Nobel Awards. Not to be confused with the more prestigious Nobel prizes that will be announced in Scandinavia next month, the satirical Ig Nobels are awarded for achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think.” Designed as a spoof of the Nobel Prizes, the awards are organized by the Annals of Improbable Research. As with everything in the world these days, Lord Rump even managed to disrupt this event, marking the first time in Ig Nobel’s 36-year history took place outside the US. All previous ceremonies had been held in Boston, and now with Trump’s aggressive immigration policies the awards will be held in alternate European cities.
Fungi was the theme of this year’s event in Zurich, Switzerland. As well as the obligatory paper airplane tosses, attendees were treated to an opera and dance performed by Nobel laureates dressed as mushrooms. Milo Puhan, an epidemiologist at the University of Zurich who took an Ig in 2017 for research showing that playing the didgeridoo could reduce snoring and sleep apnea, welcomed the move to his home city.
Real Nobel laureates handed out the awards and winners gave “24/7” lectures: describing their work in 24 seconds and then in seven words. An example from 2025, Trisha Pasricha, co-author of “Smart Phone Use on the Toilet and the Risk of Hemorrhoids” shared in 24 seconds: “We conducted a cross-sectional study of adults undergoing screening colonoscopy and observed that the majority reported employing portable hand-held computing devices during defecatory episodes. A multivariate logistic regression model demonstrated that defecation-associated computing-device utilization was independently associated with a 46% increased odds of endoscopically verified hemorrhoidal disease.” And in seven words: “smartphones are a pain in the butt.”
Here are just a few of the 2026 winners….
Biomechanics (UK, USA): for devising a more precise definition of kissing in ants, birds, polar bears, and humans. While we think of kissing as a “very human thing,” the study’s co-author Dr. Matilda Brindle, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, said that polar bears tongue, prairie dogs smooch and insects suck face. Brindle, who is writing a book on non-reproductive sexual behaviour, has also studied the evolution of masturbation, making her a strong contender to become the “Marie Curie of Ig Nobels” by winning more than once.
Economics (USA, Mexico, Canada): for amassing evidence that rich people are more likely to engage in unethical behavior. The rich are indeed more prone to behaving badly, from cutting other cars off to ignoring pedestrians. Dr. Paul Piff, a social psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, found that wealthier people also appeared more willing to lie at work. In another experiment, volunteers were left alone with a jar of sweets meant for children. When the researchers returned, the rich had taken twice as many candies as people with less money. Piff noted: “As our findings suggest, the pursuit of self-interest is a more fundamental motive among society’s elite, and the increased want associated with greater wealth and status can promote wrongdoing.”
Chemistry (India, France, Japan, Canada, USA): for discovering that milk from “vivaparous cockroaches” was better than milk from cows. A team of researchers won for showing that milk produced by cockroaches that gave birth to live young contained almost three times as much energy as diary milk proteins.
Biology (Brazil, Australia): for gently stepping on parts of venomous snakes – repeatedly, at various times of the day – to try to learn what does and what does not induce a snake to bite a human. With no surprise, pressure on the head triggered the most bites. The study also found that the snakes are more likely to bite people during the daytime with higher temperatures, and smaller snakes are more prone to attack than larger ones. Although the researchers stated that the stepping force was gentle enough to not harm the subjects, the study was later retracted due to ethical issues.
Physics (Canada, USA, China, Saudi Arabia): for theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal. A team of students at the University of Waterloo in Canada worked out that urinal splash is almost entirely eradicated if the stream strikes the urinal at less than 30 degrees. They went on to design a urinal whose shape ensures minimal splash regardless of the user’s aim.
Technology (China, Canada, USA, Egypt): for cutting off the mouth parts of female mosquitoes to make 3D printing nozzles. The group thoroughly disinfected the female mosquito mouth part, stripped off the outer layer, coated it with photocurable resin, and then cut off both ends to get a hollow “micro-syringe” which they used to extrude gel materials and print 3D structures. Not only can a mosquito nozzle work continuously for 14 days, it is very cheap.
Science (Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany): for burying 1000 identical pairs of underpants in more than 25 countries, and then digging them up after two months to understand how soil organisms broke them down. The researchers found that the type of land use, garden, meadow, field or lawn, is a key factor in the decomposition of underwear. The team also discovered that the buried cotton undies decomposed faster in soil with higher fertility and more nutrients. They have now proposed an “underwear index” using a decomposition percentage to measure the health of soil.
Carly Anne York, associate professor of biology at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, author of The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog: And Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science, shared that using mosquito proboscises as high-resolution 3D printing nozzles could be the inspiration for a new, painless mode of administering medications. “What we do know, however, is that gaining knowledge is never a frivolous endeavour, no matter how silly the topic may seem.”
Here’s one, “Excessive front-to-back wiping defecatory episodes associated with ludicrously thin toilet paper at BC Ferry terminals.”
