Cacio and pepper without lumps and stripes cows: the winners of the 2025 ignobels

Did you know that a pinch of corn starch helps to obtain the perfect cheese sauce for the cheese and pepper pasta? Or that disguising the cows as zebras protects them from annoying insects? If now we can boast of this knowledge, it is thanks to scientists so brilliant that they do not take themselves too seriously, and to the prize that every year enhances their research. The moment of the ignobels is again, the awards given to the scientific discoveries that “first make people laugh, and then reflect”.

The winners of the initiative, promoted by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research To give voice to the most light -hearted side of science, the one that stimulates curiosity and leads us to ask us what is important and what they were not, they were awarded on the evening of September 18 in a ceremony at Boston University (Here the list and the complete bibliography of the reward studies). The 2025 ignobels also crowned an Italian research – the one that revealed to the world the secret of the perfect cacio and pepper pasta, with a smooth and lump -free pecorino cream, a delight earned the ignoBel for physics: we at Evidence Network.it had seen us long and we had already written here. Let’s see who won the other prizes.

The ignobel for biology went to a team of scientists from the AquiCultural Research Center, Japan, to have involuntarily discovered how to protect cows from the annoying insect bites that force them to forget the tail and to tread, increasing stress and decreasing milk production. In a study on the usefulness of the strips for the zebras, the Japanese team painted the strips on the coat of some unsuspecting cattle: the Body Paint It has reduced the bites of the flies, it is thought for an optical effect that confuses them during the landing phase.

A group of ecologists from the University of Lomé Faculté des Sciences in Togo and the La Sapienza University of Rome discovered that the rainbow lizard (Agama Agama), a common reptile in the urban and suburban contexts of West Africa, has developed a passion for pizza with four cheeses, thanks or causes its proximity to man. And for some reason it seems to prefer it to the most digestible four seasons. The study could only win the ignobel for nutrition.

Speaking of food, the ignobel for chemistry were awarded the scientists of the Saint Barnabas Medical Center, of Livingston (USA) for having verified whether to eat Teflon (the polytetrafluoroethylene, which covers non -stick pans) can increase satiety without bringing additional calories to food.

The researchers said they are inspired by zero -calorie drinks, sweetened with molecules that cannot be metabolized by the human body. To consumers, the proposal of the teflon powder added to food in order not to fatterate continues to look a bad idea.

Oignbel for peace to a team led by social psychologists of the University of Maastricht, Holland, which have in fact verified something of which many have experience: that a slight alcohol poisoning improves verbal fluidity when it is conversed with someone in a foreign language. A glass of vodka soots the anxiety that accompanies those who must express themselves in a foreign language and could facilitate international relationships.

The creators, of the University of Shiv Nadar, India, of an furniture that many would like to at home, especially if the children make sports in the university, are awarded in the engineering category: a shoe rack that neutralizes the bad smells of footwear thanks to UV rays that eliminate the bacteria in a few minutes.

The ignobel for literature was assigned posthumously to William Bennett Bean, a doctor of the University of Texas who for 35 years noted in meticulous notes, with a cultured and full of quotes and poetic lyricism the description of how his nails grew. The one to psychology is up to a team of the University of Warsaw, Poland, who investigated what happens when it is said to a narcissist how smarter than the others is: it becomes even more narcissistic.

Finally, the ignobel for the aviation to a research, of the Israeli University of Ben Gurion, who discovered that the bats of the Egyptian fruit (Rousettus aegyptiacus) which consume fruit with a degree of alcoholic maturation take more time to move from one point to another and have a less efficient echoalization, often crashing into obstacles. Not for nothing these bats are known to carefully avoid the fruit of ethanol.