Bacteria extracted from the feces of giant pandas can be used to reduce food waste to less than 10 percent of its original mass. For making this stunning — and potentially invaluable — scientific discovery, Fumiaki Taguchi, Professor Emeritus of Kitasato University in Kanagawa Prefecture, was awarded a 2009 Ig Nobel Prize for biology in a ceremony at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 1.

Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that "first make people laugh and then make them think," according to U.S.-based Improbable Research, a grouping of scientists, journalists and other luminaries from around the world that bestowed these honors for work in many fields since 1991.

At the prize-giving in the university's Sanders Theater, Taguchi gave a minutelong speech in English to an audience of 1,200 while holding a cardboard cutout of a panda produced by Sanrio Co. (complete with furry applique a la mode), he noted with pride in a recent interview with The Japan Times.