Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
As an intellectually curious person, you’ve probably been wondering about important stuff like how many ants live on our planet. Luckily, somebody counted them for us. According to howstuffworks.com, Earth is home to 20 quadrillion ants. I can personally vouch for that number, because last weekend, half of them bit me. A battalion of savage fire ants, undeterred by long pants and covered feet, dove into my shoes and attacked my legs, sinking their ferocious ant teeth deep into my skin. With any luck, I hope to stop itching by February.
Although there’s no award for ant estimators, scientists from the University of São Paulo in Brazil scored the 2022 Ig Nobel biology prize for analyzing the sex lives of constipated scorpions. I’m sure you’ve been wondering about that, too.
For 32 years, the Igs have honored “achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK … to spark interest in science, medicine, and technology,” per improbable.com. Personally, I can appreciate science much more now that it’s not standing between me and graduation.
But let’s get back to the dating dilemma of male scorpions. When a scorpion sacrifices its tail to escape a predator, it is doomed to spend the rest of its short, bloated life on Metamucil. (I’ll spare you the details.) As they slow down, wooing a mate becomes harder. Scientists found that being pudgy and grumpy (even with a legitimate reason) doesn’t help a guy’s odds.
Last year’s transportation prize went to the team that discovered that rhinos traveling by helicopter fare best when they are upside down. FedEx and UPS aren’t vying for the major mammal business, so conservationists rely on helicopters to move rhinos away from poachers. The next time your job seems hard, remember that someone is getting paid to coax an aggressive, 1,800-pound rhino to roll over and enjoy the ride, possibly for minimum wage.
In other work with enormous creatures, Swedish scientist Magnus Gens captured this year’s Ig for safety engineering. There are hundreds of moose-verses-car collisions in Sweden, and the moose are often big enough to win.
“It’s a terrible impact,” Gens told BBC.com. “You will see the windshield explode, and all of the glass will end up in the lap and in the face and in the torso of the passengers in the front seat. And it almost tears the roof off the car.”
Since a big part of science is repetition and you can’t keep hitting the same moose with the same Saab, finding ways to moose-proof Swedish cars was difficult until Gens came up with a crash dummy. Not for the driver, but for the moose.
Gens assembled hefty red rubber plates on a gigantic frame to simulate the mammal’s body in size, shape and density. Oddly, he didn’t bother with a head. But now, test cars can drive into the headless moose at various speeds to gauge damage and eventually save lives.
These groundbreaking researchers have earned worldwide appreciation (although not from the scorpions) for their inspirational work. They each received a $10 trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe, where many wealthy princes live. (You may have received an email from one of them.) The actual value is probably around $1.32. But that’s just my hypothesis.
Jan A. Igoe once won a science fair prize for her hamster project. It was a fluke, but she remains proud and hopes to receive her $10 trillion in time for Christmas shopping. Join the fun at HumorMe@SCLiving.com. And Happy Thanksgiving.