The scientific humour magazine "Annals of Improbable Research" has awarded the prizes annually for 35 years to research that "makes you laugh first, think later," aiming to spark curiosity.

Scientists from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday for research that concluded that a small sip of alcohol sometimes improves the ability to speak a foreign language, boosting self-confidence.

The authors, who conducted tests with German-Dutch students, warned, however, that alcohol is not necessary for learning languages ​​and emphasized that it is harmful to health, especially in high doses.

At the ceremony, held at Boston University, the Ig Nobel Prize for Aviation also involved alcohol.

Researchers from Colombia, Spain, and other countries discovered that the substance poses a danger to a species of bat that inadvertently consumes it in some fruits.

Egyptian bats, the researchers observed, had their ability to fly impaired by ingesting fruits containing 1% alcohol, with echolocation impaired due to communication difficulties.

"Scientists are not so square and so serious, and they can have fun while demonstrating interesting science," said Francisco Sanchez, one of the Colombian researchers who studied drunken bats.

The gala, interrupted as is tradition by the launching of paper airplanes and which featured a short opera dedicated to digestive problems, brought together scientists and economists who had received the real Nobel Prizes and who were in charge of presenting the satirical awards.

In the chemistry section, a study concluded that Teflon, a plastic material commonly found in products such as frying pans, can be a component of a weight-loss diet because it has no calories and is not absorbed by the body.

This study, conducted by scientists from Israel and the United States, was performed only on rats. After three months on a diet containing 25% Teflon, the animals lost weight and no toxic effects were recorded, according to the authors.

Other award-winning discoveries included babies who seem to savor and enjoy garlic eaten by their mothers during breastfeeding, iguanas who love four-cheese pizza in Togo, and painting a cow with zebra stripes to reduce fly bites.

"When I did this experiment, I expected to win the Ig Nobel Prize. It's my dream. Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable," said Tomoki Kojima, whose team duct-taped Japanese cows and then spray-painted black stripes.

The physics prize went to a group of mostly Italian researchers who investigated the "transition phase" that spoils the classic pasta dish 'cacio e pepe' (cheese and pepper) with "nasty lumps."

Other experiments addressed questions such as what happens when a narcissist is told they are intelligent—which won the psychology prize—or how smelly shoes affect the experience of using a shoe rack—which won the engineering prize.

One of the prizes, for literature, was awarded posthumously to American scientist William Bean, who studied the growth of his own nails for 35 years.

The prize was accepted by one of his sons, who recalled his father's infectious passion and expressed gratitude for "recognition, finally!"