Dung beetle study wins Nobel spoof prize in Ig Nobel awards The dung beetle Bubas bubalus. The CSIRO is breeding two types of dung beetles which are specifically suited to southern climates, like NSW. Picture: CSIRO Source: Supplied AN experiment that proved people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive and a joint Australian study that showed lost dung beetles can use the Milky Way to find their way home were among the winners at this year's Ig Nobel awards ceremony. The tongue-in-cheek Nobel prize spoof honours achievements "that first make people laugh and then make them think," according to a press release. The Ig Nobels invite real Nobel laureates to confer honours on serious scientists for work that is generally only unintentionally funny. The dung beetle navigation experiment won the joint prize in biology and astronomy, given to Emily Baird, Marie Dacke, Marcus Byrne, Clarke Scholtz and Eric Warrant, who work in Australia, Sweden, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Germany. There is also a peace prize, which this year was jointly awarded to the president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus police "for arresting a one-armed man for applauding." The safety engineering prize went to late American researcher Gustano Pizzo, who invented a system to trap aeroplane hijackers, seal them into a package and parachute them into the hands of police. A team from the Britain, Netherlands and Canada were awarded the probability prize for determining that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely it is it will soon stand up. They also discovered that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon it will lie down again. The physics prize went to researchers who discovered that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond - if those people and that pond were on the moon. The study by researchers who confirmed drunk people really do think they are more attractive won the Psychology Prize. A team from Japan and Germany tackled the age-old question of why onions make us cry and discovered merely that the biochemical process is "even more complicated than scientists previously realised." The archaeology prize went to a US-Canada team who parboiled a dead shrew, swallowed it without chewing, and then carefully examined their excretions to see which bones dissolve inside the human digestive system. It was the 23rd edition of the Ig Nobels, awarded at the uber-prestigious Harvard University in Boston.