Desk Report
Published: 11 Sep 2021, 08:16 pm
No-one had done the basic investigation to determine how this would affect the animal || Photo: BBC
An experiment that hung rhinoceroses upside
down to see what effect it had on the animals has been awarded one of this
year's Ig Nobel prizes.
Other recipients included teams that studied
the bacteria in chewing gum stuck to pavements, and how to control cockroaches
on submarines.
The spoof prizes are not as famous as the
"real" Nobels - not quite.
The ceremony couldn't take place at its
usual home of Harvard University in the US because of Covid restrictions.
All the fun occurred online instead.
The science humour magazine, Annals of
Improbable Research, says its Ig Nobel awards should first make you laugh but
then make you think.
And the rhino study, which this year wins
the award for transportation research, does exactly this. What could seem dafter
than hanging 12 rhinos upside down for 10 minutes?
But wildlife veterinarian Robin Radcliffe, from Cornell University, and colleagues did exactly this in Namibia because they wanted to know if the health of the animals might be compromised when slung by their legs beneath a helicopter.
Endangered black rhinos are moved to ensure genetic diversity in breeding
It's an activity that increasingly has been
used in African conservation work to shift rhinos between areas of fragmented
habitat.
However, no-one had done the basic
investigation to check that the tranquillized animals' heart and lung function
coped with upside-down flying, said Robin.
He told BBC News: "Namibia was the
first country to take a step back and say, 'hey, let's study this and figure
out, you know, is this a safe thing to do for rhinos?"
And so, his team, in collaboration with the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, suspended 12 tranquillized black rhinoceroses by their feet from a crane, and measured their physical responses.
It's actually better for the rhino to be held by its ankles than put on its side
It turns out, the animals coped very well.
In fact, there was evidence the rhinos did better in this unusual position than
simply lying chest down or on their side.
"I think the reason for that is, when a
rhino is on its side, you have positional effects of blood flow. So in other
words, the lower parts of the lung are getting lots of blood flow for gas
exchange, but the upper part of the lung, just because of gravity, is not
getting perfused well, so when a rhino is hanging upside down, it's basically
like it's standing upside up; the lung is equally perfused.
"We've also seen that rhinos that are on their side too long, or on their sternum, especially - they get muscle damage, they get myopathy, because they're so heavy. And there's no pressure on their legs, other than the sense of the strap around their ankle," Robin explained.
The rhino team received their prize from chemistry Nobel Laureate Rich Roberts (bottom-left)
As has become customary with the Ig Nobels,
the prizes on the night were handed out by real Nobel laureates, including
Frances Arnold (chemistry, 2018), Carl Weiman (physics, 2001), and Eric Maskin
(economics, 2007).
The winners got a trophy they had to
assemble themselves from a PDF print-out and a cash prize in the form of a
counterfeit 10 trillion dollar Zimbabwean banknote.
Asked what he'd do with his "cash"
payout, Robin Radcliffe said with a chuckle: "We are always looking for
grant funding.
"When I first heard about the Ig Nobel,
I wasn't sure if this was good or bad. But I think that message that 'it makes
you laugh and then think' - this is what it's about for us. More and more
people should understand what efforts are going on to try to help save these
amazing animals that live here on Planet Earth with us."
Team-member and wildlife doctor Pete Morkel
added: "This has really changed rhino translocation, and even more so
elephant translocation. Picking these big animals up by their feet - it's now
accepted. The next thing we've got to do is some research on other species like
buffalo, hippo, and maybe even giraffe."
The full list of 2021 Ig Nobel award winners:
Biology Prize: Susanne Schötz, for analysing
variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweedling, murmuring,
meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other
modes of cat-human communication.
Ecology Prize: Leila Satari and colleagues,
for using genetic analysis to identify the different species of bacteria that
reside in wads of discarded chewing gum stuck on pavements in various
countries.
Chemistry Prize: Jörg Wicker and colleagues,
for chemically analysing the air inside movie theatres, to test whether the
odours produced by an audience reliably indicate the levels of violence, sex,
antisocial behaviour, drug use, and bad language in the movie the audience is
watching.
Economics Prize: Pavlo Blavatskyy, for
discovering that the obesity of a country's politicians may be a good indicator
of that country's corruption.
Medicine Prize: Olcay Cem Bulut and
colleagues, for demonstrating that sexual orgasms can be as effective as
decongestant medicines at improving nasal breathing.
Peace Prize: Ethan Beseris and colleagues,
for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves
from punches to the face.
Physics Prize: Alessandro Corbetta and
colleagues, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not
constantly collide with other pedestrians.
Kinetics Prize: Hisashi Murakami and
colleagues, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do sometimes
collide with other pedestrians.
Entomology Prize: John Mulrennan Jr and
colleagues, for their research study "A New Method of Cockroach Control on
Submarines".
Transportation Prize: Robin Radcliffe and colleagues, for determining by experiment whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside down. (BBC)