Italians among the 2025 IgNobel Prize winners, with the physics of cacio e pepe.

The young Italian physicists who created the recipe for lump-free cacio e pepe pasta are among the winners of the 2025 IgNobel Prizes , the parody Nobel Prizes awarded annually to bizarre scientific studies that first make people laugh and then make them think . During the ceremony at Boston University, organized by the humorous scientific magazine Annals of Improbable Research , other Italian researchers who participated in international studies on how alcohol affects the flight ability of bats and on the pizzas preferred by rainbow lizards in Togo were also awarded. Among the ten IgNobel Prizes of this 35th edition, the most notable are the one awarded to an American doctor who monitored the growth of his thumbnail for 35 years , the one won by a Japanese research group who painted cows with zebra stripes to protect them from insect bites, and the one awarded to an Indian team who studied how smelly shoes affect the use of shoe racks .

Also raising a smile are the American researchers who evaluated how breastfed newborns react to maternal garlic consumption , and the study by German, Dutch and British researchers who demonstrated how drinking alcohol can sometimes improve the ability to speak foreign languages .