Scientists win award for discovering mammals can breath through our anuses

The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony took place at MIT last night, honoring scientific achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." The winners included the Japanese researchers behind a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Med with the title "Mammalian enteral ventilation ameliorates respiratory failure." In other words, they determined that humans and other mammals can breath through our anuses.

"After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure," explains The Guardian.

The work has practical applications as patients suffering from respiratory failure could possibly use the gut "as an accessary breathing organ."

Here's the full list of winners from the award creators, the Annals of Improbable Research:

PEACE PRIZE [USA]
B.F. Skinner, for experiments to see the feasibility of housing live pigeons inside missiles to guide the flight paths of the missiles.
REFERENCE: "Pigeons in a Pelican", B.F. Skinner, American Psychologist, vol 15, no. 1, 1960, pp. 28-37. <psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0045345>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: B.F. Skinner's daughter, Julie Skinner Vargas

BOTANY PRIZE [GERMANY, BRAZIL, USA]
Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants.
REFERENCE: "Boquila trifoliolata Mimics Leaves of an Artificial Plastic Host Plant," Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita, Plant Signaling and Behavior, vol. 17, no. 1, 2022. <doi.org/10.1080%2F15592324.2021.1977530>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Felipe Yamashita

ANATOMY PRIZE [FRANCE, CHILE]
Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari, for studying whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere.
REFERENCE: "Genetic Determinism and Hemispheric Influence in Hair Whorl Formation," Marjolaine Willems, Quentin Hennocq, Sara Tunon de Lara, Nicolas Kogane, Vincent Fleury, Romy Rayssiguier, Juan José Cortés Santander, Roberto Requena, Julien Stirnemann, and Roman Hossein Khonsari, Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, vol. 125, no. 2, April 2024, article 101664. <doi.org/10.1016/j.jormas.2023.101664>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Marjolaine Willems and Roman Khonsari

MEDICINE PRIZE [SWITZERLAND, GERMANY, BELGIUM]
Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects.
REFERENCE: "How Side Effects Can Improve Treatment Efficacy: A Randomized Trial," Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, Brain, vol. 147, no. 8, August 2024, pp. 2643–2651. <doi.org/10.1093/brain/awae132>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Lieven Schenk.

PHYSICS PRIZE [USA]
James C. Liao, for demonstrating and explaining the swimming abilities of a dead trout.
REFERENCE: "Neuromuscular Control of Trout Swimming in a Vortex Street: Implications for Energy Economy During the Kármán Gait," James C. Liao, The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 207, 2004, pp. 3495-3506. <doi.org/10.1242/jeb.01125>
REFERENCE: "Passive Propulsion in Vortex Wakes," David N. Beal, Franz S. Hover, Michael S. Triantafyllou, James C. Liao, and George V. Lauder, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 549, 2006, pp. 385-402.
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: James C. ("Jimmy") Liao

PHYSIOLOGY PRIZE [JAPAN, USA]
Ryo Okabe, Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson, Gokul Kannan, Eiji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe, for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.
REFERENCE: "Mammalian Enteral Ventilation Ameliorates Respiratory Failure," Ryo Okabe, Toyofumi F. Chen-Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson, Gokul Kannan, Eiji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Date, and Takanori Takebe, Med, vol. 2, June 11, 2021, pp. 1-11. <doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2021.04.004>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Takanori Takebe, Toyofumi Chen-Yoshikawa, Ryo Okabe, Eiji Kobayashi, Yosuke Yoneyama, Yuhei Yokoyama

PROBABILITY PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, SWITZERLAND, BELGIUM, FRANCE, GERMANY, HUNGARY, CZECH REPUBLIC]
František Bartoš, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Henrik Godmann, and many colleagues, for showing, both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side as it started.
REFERENCE: "Fair Coins Tend to Land on the Same Side They Started: Evidence from 350,757 Flips," František Bartoš, et al., arXiv 2310.04153, 2023. <doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2310.04153>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Frantisek Bartos, and Eric-Jan Wagenmakers

CHEMISTRY PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE]
Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen, for using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms.
REFERENCE: "Chromatographic Separation of Active Polymer–Like Worm Mixtures by Contour Length and Activity," Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, and Sander Woutersen, Science Advances, vol. 8, no. 23, 2022, article eabj7918. <doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj7918>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn, Sander Woutersen

DEMOGRAPHY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK]
Saul Justin Newman, for detective work to discover that many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death recordkeeping.
REFERENCE: "Supercentenarians and the Oldest-Old Are Concentrated into Regions with No Birth Certificates and Short Lifespans," Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 704080, 2019. <doi.org/10.1101/704080>
REFERENCE: "Supercentenarian and Remarkable Age Records Exhibit Patterns Indicative of Clerical Errors and Pension Fraud," Saul Justin Newman, BioRxiv, 2024. <doi.org/10.1101/704080>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Saul Justin Newman

BIOLOGY PRIZE [USA]
Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen, for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk.
REFERENCE: "Factors Involved in the Ejection of Milk," Fordyce Ely and W.E. Petersen, Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 3, 1941, pp. 211- 23. <doi.org/10.1093/ansci/1939.1.80>
WHO CAME TO THE CEREMONY: Fordyce Ely's daughter Jane Ely Wells and grandson Matt Wells