A group of Japanese researchers won this year's Ig Nobel Prize for biology on Thursday for their discovery that painting cows in a zebra pattern makes them attract fewer blood-feeding insects.
It is the 19th consecutive year that Japanese researchers have received an Ig Nobel Prize, a spoof of the Nobel Prize that honors humorous but creative research. The award ceremony was held at Boston University in Massachusetts.
Tomoki Kojima of the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and other researchers painted white stripes on black cows with water-based paint to compare the number of insects that were attracted to them versus ordinary black cows.
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