A research team of Japanese and American scientists won the Ig Nobel Prize in physiology Thursday for discovering that mammals are capable of breathing through their anuses, which they hope will help treat people with COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases.
The award for the team-of-11’s study, published in the journal Med in 2021, marks the 18th consecutive year that Japanese nationals have claimed the humorous prize, which is presented by the U.S. scientific magazine Annals of Improbable Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“First and foremost, thank you for believing (in) the potential of anus,” Takanori Takebe, a professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University who was one of the researchers, said in English.
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