Kissing apes, anti-splash urinals: This year's Ig Nobels showcase surprising science

Audience members toss paper airplanes during the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize award ceremony in Boston, Mass. Robert F. Bukaty/AP hide caption

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes — which are awarded for humorous, yet thought-provoking research — have been announced, but not on their home turf.

For the first time in the ceremony's 35-year history, officials are holding the Ig Nobel ceremony outside of the United States — in Zurich, Switzerland.

The reasons, they say, have to do with the increasingly hostile climate in the U.S. toward science and foreigners.

"Before last year, almost every winner would find a way to travel to the ceremony from around the world," says Marc Abrahams , who founded the Ig Nobels in 1991. "Last year, of the 10 winners, we ended up with only six of them at the ceremony."

Four did not want to travel to the U.S., citing safety concerns related to unpredictable immigration and visa protocols.

"They'd been seeing news reports of people being possibly sent right home when they arrived here, people being badgered about their personal lives in great detail, of people potentially being grabbed and put in prison or stuck on an airplane and sent to some other country, or who knows what else," explains Abrahams.

In 2025, the Physics Ig Nobel Prize went to a group of European researchers who studied the behavior of cacio e pepe pasta sauce. Improbable Research hide caption