How nutritious is cockroach milk? At last, this burning question is getting the recognition it so sorely deserves: the team answering it has received one of the 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes.
The annual awards, which recognize the most absurd research science can offer, were handed out at a ceremony in Zurich on Thursday. And yes, the winners in chemistry—Leonard Chavas, now at DECTRIS Japan, and Subramanian Ramaswamy, now at Purdue University—really did calorie count the milk proteins cockroaches make to nourish their young. (Their results, based on advanced x-ray crystallography, indicate cockroach milk is more than three times as energy-dense as ordinary dairy.)
The insect enthusiasts were in good company: other winners included University of Oxford scientists who devised a proper definition of “kissing” in order to argue that human ancestors smooched Neanderthals, a team that bravely (or stupidly) taunted venomous snakes to study why they bite and researchers who confirmed what we all intuitively know: people who drive expensive cars tend to be jerks.
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A posthumous award in medicine was given to the late Japanese physiologist Tokuji Unno for his landmark 1977 study on the aerodynamics of nose blowing. The schnoz was a theme: another award went to a study that showed parents like their babies’ scents—but find their teenagers’ odors repulsive.
Speaking of foul-smelling things, where would humanity be without the now Ig Nobel–winning knowledge of what happens to 1,000 pairs of underpants buried for months at sites around the globe?
Past prizewinners have run the gamut of science that, at first glance, appears to be entirely unessential. There was the physician who analyzed the growth rate of his fingernails for 35 years and the geologist who looked into why his colleagues lick rocks. Or how about the research duo that examined how bedsheets get wrinkled—or the team that perfected the arcane art of collecting whale boogers via remote-controlled helicopters? And let’s not forget the stalwart scientists behind the world-shattering revelation that tortoises don’t notice other animals yawning.
While, on the surface, the Ig Nobels might seem like a silly good time, there is a point to the zaniness: the awards’ twofold purpose is to make people laugh and then think. Scientific advancements don’t proceed in linear fashion; they usually zig and zag before reaching any point of significance for everyday people’s lives. Take, for instance, research honored in 2012 in which scientists used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine to find dubious signs of “brain activity” in a stone-dead Atlantic salmon. That seemingly laughable result ultimately led neuroscientists to rethink how they analyze their data.
Because of concern for the safety of international winners, this was the first time the awards bash occurred outside the U.S., but American fans of absurd science won’t miss out on the fun entirely. A smaller ceremony will be held in Cambridge, Mass., on September 24.
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