IgNobel Awards 2008 (MIT)

At an event to honor scientists whose research "made you laugh and then made you think," the inaugural speaker set the tone for a rollicking afternoon. Kees Moeliker, a former IgNobel laureate recounted how, from his sea-facing office, he saw a mallard mount a dead male duck of the same species. Thus began the Dutch curator's investigation into homosexual avian necrophilia.

The mallard's unusual behavior sent Moeliker scurrying to research literature to check if necrophilia had been reported in animals as well. Sure enough, there was a report of "Davian behavior" in squirrels. As he pondered on the nomenclature and delved some more -- presumably, outside research literature -- he chanced upon this limerick:

There was an old miner named Dave
who kept a dead whore in his cave
You have to admit
He hadn't much wit
But look at the money he saved!

Still think he was just trying to be funny? Check out this publication to convince yourself this is no canard.

BIOLOGY
C.W. Moeliker, of Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.
[REFERENCE: "The First Case of Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas platyrhynchos (Aves: Anatidae)" C.W. Moeliker, Deinsea, vol. 8, 2001, pp. 243-7.]

Apparently, the Harvard Natural History Museum has a dead mallard -- perhaps the object of someone's lust -- on exhibit, but refused to lend it to Moeliker to wave around during the talk. (They had obliged once previously.) This time the curator made do with a quacking rubber specimen of the bird .

Another former winner, A SWORD SWALLOWER !!! Seriously, how often does someone lieterally nudge their heart aside for you? I watched the supremely skilled Dan Meyer perform this feat through splayed fingers that covered my eyes.




MEDICINE: Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."

REFERENCE: "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects," Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer, British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, vol. 333, pp. 1285-7.