Upside-down rhinoceros research wins Ig Nobel Prize 2021

The experiment of hanging rhinos upside down to understand the effects on their bodies was one of this year's Ig Nobel Prize-winning studies.

Contrary to the prestigious Nobel Prize , the Ig Nobel is an annual award that honors research that "first makes people laugh, then makes them think", according to the humorous science journal Annals of Improbable Research . All of the award-winning research may seem silly, but when we dig deeper, we'll find that most are geared toward solving real-world problems and published in scholarly journals after peer review. co-experts. Similar to last year, this year's awards ceremony did not take place at the Sanders Theater at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA as usual but was held online on the evening of September 9 due to Covid-19.

The researchers experimented with hanging rhinos upside down with a crane. (Photo: BBC).

Traditionally, Nobel laureates announce and award prizes, including Frances Arnold (Nobel Chemistry 2018), Marty Chalfie and Eric Maskin (Nobel Economics 2007). The winner must assemble the certificate trophy from the PDF print and receive a prize of 10 trillion Zimbabwe dollars. In addition to the award-winning rhino research in the field of Transport, the Ig Nobel 2021 also honors research into bacteria in roadside gum and how to control cockroaches on submarines.

Veterinarian Robin Radcliffe of Cornell University and colleagues wanted to find out how the health of rhinos might be affected by hanging upside down from a helicopter. This is an increasingly popular practice in conservation in Africa to transport rhinos between regions. However, there are no basic studies examining how the cardiopulmonary function of anesthetized rhinoceros responds to flying upside down, according to Robin.

The team, in collaboration with Namibia's Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism, hung 12 anesthetized black rhinos upside down under a crane to measure their physiological responses. As a result, the animals endured well. In fact, there's evidence rhinos perform better in this position than lying flat on their chest or lying on their side.

"I think the reason is that when rhinos are lying on their side, they have to suffer from the blood flow. In other words, the lower half of the lungs receive a lot of blood for gas exchange, but due to gravity, the upper part is not circulating. When rhinos hang upside down, their lungs circulate blood more evenly and breathing is as normal as when standing upright. They often suffer muscle damage because they're too heavy. In contrast, when hanging upside down, their legs don't experience any pressure except for the feeling of being tied around the knee, " said Robin.

• The Ig Nobel Prize in Biology was awarded to researcher Susanne Schötz for her analysis of changes in cat meows when communicating with humans.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Ecology went to Leila Satari and her colleagues for using genetic analysis to identify different species of bacteria that reside in chewing gum stuck on sidewalks in many countries.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry honors Jörg Wicker and his collaborators who chemically analyzed the air inside cinemas to test whether the odors emitted by theatergoers reflected levels of violence, sex, and anti-social behaviour. society, drug use, and profanity in the films they watched.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Pavlo Blavatskyy , who discovered that a country's politician's obesity could be a sign of corruption.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Olcay Cem Bulut and colleagues for research that proved orgasm was as effective as decongestants in improving breathing.
• At the Ig Nobel Peace Prize, Ethan Beseris and his colleagues were honored for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches in the face.
• The winner of the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics is Alessandro Corbetta's team for an experiment to find out why pedestrians rarely hit other pedestrians.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Kinetics went to Hisashi Murakami et al. , who conducted experiments to find out why pedestrians sometimes crash into other pedestrians.
• The Ig Nobel Prize in Entomology was awarded to the research team of John Mulrennan Jr for proposing a new method to control cockroaches on submarines.

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