A month before the prestigious Nobel Prizes are handed out to some of the world’s greatest minds and their pioneering work, another less groundbreaking awards ceremony takes place. Founded in 1991 by journal editor Marc Abrahams, the Ig Nobel Prize parodies its namesake with “achievements that make people laugh, then think”. Here are the winners of the latest awards, given to STEM research.
HOW CONSTIPATION AFFECTS SCORPION MATING
Biology Prize
Researchers at the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil took a deep dive into that amputate their own tails, the process of which also permanently removes their anus. As a defensive response to predators known as autotomy, many scorpions will purposefully detach their tails in the hope that predators will be satisfied with a portion of the scorpion, allowing the rest of the animal to escape. There is one drawback, however. They also lose the end of their digestive tract and their anus. Without the ability to defecate, tailless scorpions will die from constipation after several months. This still leaves plenty of time to find a mate, if they are quick enough to find them. By looking at the maximum running speed of automised scorpions, researchers found that the loss of a tail and the inability to poop didn’t slow scorpions enough to prevent them from finding a mate.
