The awards for the weirdest yet real scientific studies: Eating Teflon and lizards’ favorite pizza toppings

The 35th Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out last week, spotlighting unusual scientific research from around the world—studies that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

The awards, organized by the Annals of Improbable Research, focused on digestion this year. That meant recognition for a range of surprising topics.

Do babies prefer ‘garlic’ milk?

The Pediatrics Prize this year went to research first carried out in 1991, exploring whether babies prefer breast milk when mothers had eaten garlic—and whether adults can tell the difference. The answer was yes on both counts. Adults could smell the difference, and babies spent longer nursing when their mothers had eaten garlic.

From garlic to pizzas for lizards

The Nutrition Prize went to Luca Luiselli, a tropical ecologist at the Institute for Development, Ecology, Conservation and Cooperation in Italy. He wanted to know why African rainbow lizards adapt so well to city life. One theory: pizza. To test it, Luiselli and his team experimented to see which pizza toppings the lizards preferred.

When four-cheese pizza was put out, the lizards came flocking—descending from trees and converging from yards away. But when it was four-seasons pizza, they weren’t interested.

“The four-cheese scent is stronger than other types of pizza, and therefore we think this attracted the lizards,” the researchers concluded.

Can Teflon increase food volume and help you lose weight?

Cooking on Teflon is common thanks to its nonstick properties. But what about eating it—so you feel full, and then it just, er, slides out? That was the idea of Dr. Rotem Naftalovich from Rutgers University in New Jersey, who dreamed it up with his brother David.

Their study, published in Obesity Technology, outlined how Teflon could be added to food to make up a quarter of total intake by volume, with zero calories.

While they tested chocolate bars containing Teflon, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration hasn’t embraced the plan. “I don’t think they wanted to review it because it was such a wonky idea,” Naftalovich said.

Other Ig Nobel winners

Other prizes included: Dr. Tomoki Kojima of Japan, who showed that painting cows with zebra-like stripes reduced insect bites; Indian researchers who built a shoe rack that neutralizes odors; Colombian scientists who discovered that drunk bats struggle to fly and echolocate; and Dutch researchers who won the Peace Prize for showing that alcohol can improve a person’s ability to speak a foreign language.

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