Getting Bats Drunk, Lizards' Pizza Preferences, And Praising Narcissists Win Big At 2025 Ig Nobel Awards

The 35th Ig Nobel prizes honor (or dishonor) research on the pizza preferences of lizards, the effect of garlic consumption on breast milk, and Teflon’s place in a weight loss program. Two studies on the effects of alcohol – on bats’ flying capacity and humans speaking a second language – have won aviation and peace prizes, respectively. In an era when science faces its greatest threats since the Inquisition, highlighting such frivolous-sounding research may worry some defenders, but the Ig Nobels are to highlight science that "makes people LAUGH...then THINK" and some prizes here are for work with obvious real-world applications.

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Decades of research has revealed just how common alcohol consumption is in wild animals. Just this week, a study showed the average chimpanzee consumes the equivalent of almost two standard drinks a day. Researchers have even explored the effects of booze on zebrafish social dynamics, so it’s no surprise that an intercontinental collaboration explored how fruitbats’ flying and echolocation powers are affected when their diet gets a little too fruity.

Indeed, perhaps the most unexpected thing about this prize is that it took 15 years from publication to recognition. Having previously shown that Egyptian fruit bats (Rousettus aegyptiacus) prefer to avoid fruit with more than 1 percent ethanol, the authors revealed that after a meal where alcohol exceeded that level, the bats flew more slowly down a corridor and struggled to echolocate. Where some animals will go out of their way to get blotto, it seems bats have a greater sense of self-preservation, perhaps understandably when the risks are so much more obvious.

In more shocking work, the chemistry prize was awarded for the remarkable decision to propose adding bulk quantities of polytetrafluoroethylene (better known as Teflon) to make people feel full on a low-calorie diet. The ideal material for inducing satiation without making one fat would be: “Inert, safe, resistant to stomach acid, lack taste, available in powder form, smooth, resistant to heat, and cost-effective,” the authors write.

Presumably they reasoned that if nothing sticks to a Teflon frying pan, it won’t stick to your digestive system and will pass harmlessly through. Why avoid microplastics when you can build your diet around them? People alarmed by the possibility that tiny quantities of Teflon might break off their kitchen implements and get into their food might reach a different conclusion. Although the authors’ review of past research concludes a high-Teflon diet is likely safe and assuages hunger in rats, nine years after publication, no one seems to have adopted the idea. Strange.

Sadly, Dr William Bean did not live to see his 35-year observation and analysis of how the rate of growth of one of his fingernails recognized, so the Literature prize was collected by his son. In contrast, it’s only two years since researchers observed that Rainbow lizards (Agama agama) prefer a four-cheese topping to any other pizza type, despite millions of years of evolution pointing them towards insects and other invertebrates.

There’s a more obvious practical application to the discovery that eating garlic changes the smell of breast milk, with the effects peaking two hours later, and that babies like it. Decades after this discovery, the Ig Nobel may raise awareness among nursing mothers of the fact that babies attach longer and consume more milk after a mother has eaten garlic, useful in cases where babies underfeed.

The fact that painting cows with zebra stripes can protect cattle from insect bites is such an exciting field of research that we have covered both the 50 percent bite reduction and the likely explanation.

We’re less certain about whether the discovery that, in contrast to fruit bat aviation, people can speak a newly learned language better after a few drinks deserves the Peace Prize. If visitors to foreign lands start drinking to make themselves better understood, the effects could be quite the opposite. Still, it’s appropriate the prize was announced the day before International Talk Like a Pirate Day. 

To the discovery that putting stinky shoes on a shoe rack undermines the user experience of said rack, well, color us amazed.

The commercial potential of the discovery that phase transitions in pasta sauce can produce less favorable textures is obvious, particularly the finding that cheese with starch content below 1 percent avoids the undesirable “Mozzarella Phase”. The provision of a “scientifically optimized recipe” for consistently flawless Pasta alla cacio e pepe should be proof enough of the value of science.

If ever there was a study for our times, however, it must be the Psychology Prize-winning research revealing that a single piece of feedback can alter measures of narcissism.

In light of past evidence that grandiose narcissists are particularly concerned about their intelligence and overestimate their cognitive abilities, the authors compared scores of narcissism after people had received feedback on their intelligence. Half the subjects were told they had above-average intelligence, and half below, unrelated to their actual score on the test.

In findings that will amaze no one, people considered the test more reliable when they got the result they liked.

However, contrary to the author’s expectations, only one of three types of narcissism, striving for uniqueness, was found to be statistically significantly affected by the feedback. The study also found that people were less inclined to overestimate their intelligence after doing an IQ test, so maybe the true lesson is if you want to keep a lid on someone’s ego, give them something hard to do.