Ig Nobel Prizes 2026 from kissing animals to stepping on venomous snakes

Mosquitoes as printer parts, buried underwear and the physics of urinals. Ten award-winning projects show how much science can investigate. One also raises questions about its ethical limits.

Reading time: approximately 5–7 minutes

Imagine spending your working day burying underwear. Or investigating what happens when you step on a venomous snake. At first, it sounds like a bad idea for an online video. Yet questions like these can sit behind real scientific studies.

The Ig Nobel Prizes seek out exactly this kind of research: work that first makes people laugh, then makes them think. These are separate from the Nobel Prizes, and winning does not automatically mean an experiment was pointless. The 2026 awards recognised ten subjects, from animal behaviour to everyday hygiene. They were presented in Zurich on 3 September, and some of the winning studies were published many years earlier.

Official list of prizes and recipients

1. Which animals kiss?

Biomechanics Prize

A kiss seems simple. But try writing a definition that works beyond humans. Does feeding a youngster mouth to mouth count? What about contact during a fight?

Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot and Stuart West set criteria: non-aggressive mouth-to-mouth contact within a species, movement of the lips or mouthparts, and no food transfer. Chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans have been observed kissing. Evolutionary analysis suggests ancient origins for this behaviour in great apes.

Such a definition helps us compare behaviour without automatically reading human romance into every encounter. An animal can meet the criteria for a kiss without revealing what that experience feels like to it.

Go deeper: study on the evolution of kissing · Oxford’s accessible explanation

2. A mosquito as a 3D-printer nozzle

Technology Prize

A mosquito’s feeding tube can do more than draw blood. It can also dispense material precisely.

Researchers at McGill and Drexel universities used parts from euthanised female mosquitoes as fine printing nozzles. They called the technique 3D necroprinting. It produced lines around 20 micrometres wide and tiny structures, including scaffolds containing cells.

The striking idea is that a biological structure becomes a working component of the equipment. Potential applications include tissue engineering, although this is a research technique rather than an ordinary printer you can upgrade with a mosquito at home.

Go deeper: original study · McGill’s explanation

3. Underwear as a soil-health test

Soil Science Prize

Burying cotton underwear and digging it up later sounds like an unusual gardening ritual. Cotton, however, contains cellulose that soil organisms can break down.

A Swiss project involved a thousand volunteers and more than two thousand pairs of underwear. Researchers assessed decomposition alongside soil samples. The more fabric disappears, the greater its decomposition under those conditions.

It offers a visible glimpse of life beneath our feet. Hole-ridden underwear alone cannot establish overall soil health, contamination or suitability for a particular crop. It reveals one important part of the story.

Go deeper: citizen-science study · University of Zurich article

4. A urinal without splashback

Physics Prize

Angles matter even in the bathroom. Researchers investigated a liquid jet striking a surface and found that a shallow impact angle, roughly below 30 degrees relative to the surface, greatly reduces splashing.

They designed urinal shapes that encourage this kind of impact across different user positions. Controlled tests produced very little splashback.

Behind the amusing subject is a practical problem: droplets on clothing and floors, hygiene and cleaning. It is a useful reminder that physics can improve things we rarely associate with science.

Go deeper: study and urinal designs · University of Waterloo report

5. How to blow your nose properly

Medicine Prize

Even nose-blowing has its own aerodynamics. Japanese physician Tokuji Unno received a posthumous award for a 1977 paper co-authored with Hiroshi Yajima.

The researchers measured airflow through one or both nostrils during nose-blowing and monitored pressure changes. Closing the more open nostril increased airflow through the more obstructed one.

The study shows that an apparently obvious action can be examined experimentally. Its historical conclusions alone are not a current medical guide or a reason to blow your nose as forcefully as possible.

Go deeper: original paper with an English abstract

6. They stepped on venomous snakes. The study was later retracted.

Biology Prize

This is the year’s most controversial story. A Brazilian team investigated defensive responses in the venomous snake Bothrops jararaca. A researcher wearing protective footwear applied controlled steps to different parts of its body. Experiments varied conditions such as temperature and time of day to investigate when the snake responded by biting.

The question had a serious context: understanding the circumstances of snakebites. But the importance of a question does not, by itself, justify the method used to investigate it.

Why was the study retracted?

The paper appeared in May 2024. Scientific Reports retracted it on 11 February 2025. According to the notice, the ethical approval did not cover newborn snakes or the soft-stepping method. All the authors disagreed with the retraction.

The stated reason was therefore that the experiments exceeded the scope of the ethical approval. The notice does not say the data were fabricated. Equally, findings from a retracted paper should not be presented as firmly established knowledge.

Why did it still win a prize?

An Ig Nobel Prize does not reinstate a retracted study. The organisers recognised an unusual experiment under their principle of making people laugh, then think. The official award citation describes stepping on snakes; it does not provide a detailed explanation of how the retraction was considered during selection.

It would therefore be inaccurate to say the prize rewarded an ethical breach or endorsed the experiment’s conduct. The distinction between an award and scientific credibility matters here.

The story leaves readers with a question: is it enough for an experiment to be original and address a useful problem? Or must the way it reaches an answer be equally defensible?

Go deeper: original paper marked as retracted · official retraction notice · award citation

7. Cockroach “milk” and nutrients stored in crystals

Chemistry Prize

The cockroach Diploptera punctata nourishes its developing young with a milk-like secretion. Nutrient-rich crystals containing proteins, sugars and fats form in their digestive tract.

The winning team investigated their molecular structure. For an equivalent mass, the crystals contain more than three times the energy of the mammalian milks compared in the study.

The image of milking a cockroach is hard to resist, but this research examines a natural way of storing nutrients. High energy density alone does not establish that a substance is suitable as human food.

Go deeper: original study in IUCrJ

8. Babies smell better to parents than older children do

Olfaction Prize

In a Polish questionnaire study, 235 parents rated their children’s smell. Pleasant ratings declined with age: from around 94% for the youngest group to 75% for those older than fourteen.

The paper’s title sounds harsher than its findings. Most parents still rated the oldest group’s smell positively. They also answered from memory, without blindly sniffing samples. The result concerns parental perception rather than a universal measure of how teenagers smell.

Go deeper: original study

9. Higher status and sweets intended for children

Economics Prize

Paul Piff’s team investigated social status and unethical behaviour. In one experiment, participants prompted to feel higher in status took more sweets from a jar supposedly intended for children. They were allowed to take some, but doing so left fewer for the children.

The paper also examined other situations, including driving behaviour. Its result is not a verdict on every wealthy person. The sweets do, however, make an abstract question about privilege concrete: how do we behave when we can put ourselves first at someone else’s expense?

Go deeper: original PNAS paper, with a link to its correction

10. We want kind friends. Less so towards our enemies.

Peace Prize

Research by Jaimie Arona Krems and colleagues found that preferences for an ideal friend depend on who receives that friend’s behaviour. People can value kindness towards themselves while preferring greater viciousness towards their enemies.

The familiar idea of wanting someone “on my side” becomes a research question. Calling it a Peace Prize adds irony: feelings of loyalty can coexist with hostility towards others. The study maps preferences; it does not recommend behaving this way.

Go deeper: original study on friendship preferences

When laughter becomes a question

The most interesting moment at the Ig Nobels comes after the first laugh. A mosquito becomes a tool, underwear becomes a way to investigate soil, and a urinal becomes a fluid-flow problem.

With the snakes, that second look also leads to ethics. Science needs curiosity, precise questions and evidence. It also needs responsibility for what we do to obtain them.