Ig Nobel Prize: Scientists win an award for giving alligator helium and making it shout

Stephen Rieber and colleagues performed the experiment to try to understand how alligators might communicate it was a serious piece of research but its slightly comedic aspects have just won the team an IG Nobel prize ten such awards were handed out on Thursday by the science humor magazine Annals of improbable research.

the ignoble acoustics prize goes to a team that represents the countries of Austria Sweden japan the USA and Switzerland the prize is awarded to Stefan Reber Takeshi Nishimura Udit Yanish mark Robertson and Tecumseh fitch for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium enriched air our question was whether alligators have vocal tract resonances like human speech.

The key is that sound travels faster in helium this makes the air passages seem shorter making the resonances higher so if you breathe helium and the frequency shift upward that shows that they're resonances the hard part is getting an alligator to breathe helium our subject was a Chinese alligator we recorded her inhaling normal air and helios a helium-oxygen mixture,

the annual igs are intended as a bit of a spoof on the more sober Nobel science prizes other 2020 winners included the team that devised a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows and the group that wanted to see what happened when earthworms were vibrated at high frequency.

All this kind of stuff sounds daft but when you dig a little deeper you realize much of the research lauded by the agent bells is actually intended to tackle real-world problems and gets published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals dr Rieber told the news he was honored to receive the ig his team's study had attempted to show that crocodilians and other reptiles could advertise their body size through their vocalizations,

Something that mammals and birds can do when they call out the resonances in your vocal tract sounds lower overall if you're larger because it's a larger space in which the air can vibrate we didn't know if reptiles actually had resonances frogs amphibians don't for example so we needed a proof of concept that crocodilians actually have resonances.

He explained this was achieved by putting an alligator in an enclosed tank that could be filled alternately with normal air and a supply of oxygen and helium heliox the vibrations of the vocal tissues don't change but the noise the animals are able to make a will because the speed of sound is different in the different gas mixtures the analysis of the frequency spectrum confirmed alligator's body size does indeed correlate with the resonances they produce although whether the animals can pick up on these cues I haven't tested the Lund university Sweden researcher said this is the 30th year the big Nobel have been presented their usual home is the sanders theatre at Harvard University in Cambridge Massachusetts u.s,

And the event is always a riotous affair that involves lots of paper plane throwing in a small girl who shouts boring at anyone who talks for too long but the COVID 19 crisis forced this year's ceremony online even so some traditions were maintained like the involvement of real Nobel laureates dr Rieber's team was presented with its big by Andre geim the UK-based researcher who won the physics Nobel in 2010 for his work on graphene the professor is something of a superstar having also won an ig earlier in his career for levitating frogs here's a full list of the 2020 ig Nobel winners each winning team was given a cash prize of a 10 trillion dollar bill from zimbabwe for acoustics Stefan Rieber Takeshi Nishimura Judith Janish mark Robertson,

And Tecumseh fitch for inducing a female Chinese alligator to bellow in an airtight chamber filled with helium-enriched air psychology Miranda jackman and Nicholas rule for devising a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows peace the governments of India and Pakistan for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other's doorbells in the middle of the night and then run away before anyone had a chance to answer the door physics ivan Asimov and Andrey patotsky for determining experimentally what happens to the shape of a living earthworm,

When one vibrates the earthworm at high-frequency economics Christopher Watkins and colleagues for trying to quantify the relationship between different countries national income and equality and the average amount of mouth-to-mouth kissing management she guan motion Shang Yeong kong sheng Yong Guang sheng and ling xian si five professional hitmen in Guangxi china who subcontracted a murder one to the other with none of them.

In the end, actually carrying out the crime entomology Richard vetter for collecting evidence that many entomologists scientists who study insects are afraid of spiders which are not insects medical education Jair bolsonaro of brazil Boris johnson of the united kingdom Narendra Modi of India Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico alexander Lukashenka of Belarus Donald trump of the USA Recep Tayyip Erdogan of turkey Vladimir Putin of Russia,

And gurbanguli Berta mohammadao of Turkmenistan for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can materials science meet Naren Michelle Beber James Norris Alyssa Perrone Ashley Rutkowski Michael Wilson and mary ann recanted for showing that knives manufactured from frozen human feces do not work well Jonathan Amos internet.