The 26th edition of the annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which celebrate the silly side of science, were handed out today at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The prizes aim to "celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," organizers said of the event, which featured a traditional onstage paper airplane toss.
The top honor in the reproduction category went to the late Ahmed Shafik from Cairo University, who died in 2007, for his work that showed how the sex lives of rats are affected by the fabric of pants they are fitted with.
The biology prize went jointly to Charles Foster, who lived in the wild several times as animals including a badger, an otter and a bird, and to Thomas Thwaites, who constructed prosthetic legs so he could live three days on all fours and roam the hills with goats.
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The winners received a trophy in the likeness of a large clock and USD 10 trillion in cash prizes in essentially worthless, inflation-ravaged Zimbabwean money.
Like every year, the awards were presented by real Nobel laureates, with four attending Thursday's ceremony.
In a twist, Volkswagen -- caught for cheating US emissions law -- nabbed the chemistry prize for "solving the problem of excessive automobile emissions by automatically, electromechanically producing fewer emissions whenever the cars are being tested."
The prize comes at a massive cost for the German automaker -- including a USD 14.7 billion settlement the company agreed to help resolve the dispute.
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