Every year, the most accomplished scientists  in the world get their hair cut at the beginning of October just in case they  receive a very special phone call from Sweden.

It’s what some of them have been waiting  for their whole lives: the Nobel Prize. But there’s a lesser known award  that the team has always loved here at Sci

Show: the Ig Nobel Prize. Instead of recognizing the  world’s most important research, the Ig Nobel celebrates the weirdest. And quite a few Ig Nobels have gone  to scientists studying weird things about our favorite subject: ourselves. So here are 10 of the greatest  Ig Nobels ever awarded for research on the world’s  strangest animal: humans. [♪ INTRO] One of the weirdest things about people is how our beards only cover a specific part of our faces.

Like, they could just as easily go  over the bridge of our noses too. But that’s more of an AI version of a beard. You know, one made by a computer that has no idea it just inspired  nightmares across the world.

No, beards pretty much stay along the jawline. And a study published in 2020 might explain why. The authors of that publication placed a sheepskin over the top of an epoxy material  designed to simulate bone.

Then they dropped a weight on that fake  face to see if it would break under impact. As you might expect, it did. Pretty much every single time.

But then they covered some of the  fake face in wool, simulating a beard. And the fake bone only broke  about half of the time! That led these researchers to theorize that we have beards covering our  chins to protect them when we fight.

After all, the bone under your beard is one  of the most likely to break during a scuffle. It might even work the same way  a kevlar bulletproof vest does, by distributing the force of a  blow over a larger surface area. When they calculated how much  energy was absorbed by the wool versus sheared skin, the  wool came out ahead by 37%.

So we might have beards over our  chins specifically to take a punch. And if you feel like it takes a lot of self  control to not punch some unbearded people in the face, this next Ig Nobel  Prize has a life hack for you. Apparently, one way to control  your urges is with pee.

Researchers in the Netherlands and Norway  learned that, if you’re willing to risk the urinary tract infection, holding in  your pee has all sorts of benefits. They asked university students, the guinea  pigs of humanity, to do a water taste test. This was, of course, a ruse  to fill their bladders.

Some of them were instructed  to drink all of the water, while others were told to just sip it. Then the scientists had them do some  busy work to build up the urgency to pee. Once they had spent sufficient time  sitting around full of excess water, they were asked to do some financial planning.

As it turns out, the participants  who drank all of the water and really had to suppress the urge to pee were the ones who could suppress the urge  for instant gratification of other kinds. Because those individuals  were willing to wait longer for a larger payout on the  financial questionnaire. Meanwhile, the participants  who just sipped the water tended to choose the immediate smaller payout.

It seems kind of unbelievable that urination  urgency is related to financial planning. But these researchers think that  the “stop” signals in your brain that keep you from emptying your  bladder activate the stop signals that keep you from making  short-sighted decisions about money. Now, finally getting to the restroom after  holding it in for too long feels incredible.

But nothing compares to the feeling studied by our next Ig Nobel  winner: scratching an itch. Sometimes, you have a very itchy spot  that you really shouldn’t scratch. Like, you know you’ll just end up doing  more damage to your skin than good.

But it’s so itchy!! You have to do something! Well, researchers in Germany figured out another weird thing about people that  might help out in that situation.

But to test itch relief, they  first had to make people itchy. So they injected histamines into  one arm of each study participant. Then, they placed a mirror between  that person’s left and right arms.

When the participant looked into the mirror,  it reflected the image of one of their arms. So basically, they could see  two arms in front of them, but it was really just one arm and its reflection. Essentially, the person could look into  the mirror and get the impression that everything that was happening to the non-itchy arm, for example looked like it was happening to the itchy arm.

And in one of the creepier but  harmless research protocols, the scientists then stroked the participants’  arms to help them scratch the itch. The thing is, they didn’t  always scratch the itchy arm. They found that sometimes, scratching the  non-itchy arm also worked to relieve the itch!

I mean, it didn’t work as well as  scratching the one that was actually itchy. But having an image of the  non-itchy arm being scratched seemed to be enough to provide some relief. I guess we’re more malleable than we think.

Speaking of which… You know those clickers used to train dogs? Where you tell the dog to sit, and when they sit, you press a button to make a clicking  sound that they associate with a treat? People can be trained that way, too.

And that’s not to say anything  about our intelligence, because the study that won the Ig Nobel  Prize used clickers to train surgeons. …Who you’d hope are pretty smart people. The authors of this study trained  a group of medical students to tie a knot and drill a hole  using dog training clickers. And the students who learned with clickers completed those tasks more  precisely than other students.

Like, all 12 of the clicker trained students  performed each step of the task as shown, while only four of the  traditionally taught students did. It’s basic operant conditioning  to learn not-so-basic skills. And apparently there’s still a lot to  learn about our most basic behaviors.

Because thanks to the next prize, we know that you have even more  to gain from sex than you thought. When your nose feels a little  stuffy, maybe you need an orgasm. A study published in 2021 reported on the nasal decongestant effects  of orgasms in 18 couples.

They were operating on the honor  system, because well, yeah. So each participant assessed their  own nasal breathing right before sex, immediately after sex, and then after  30 minutes, 1 hour, and 3 hours. They also checked in at the  same time intervals after using a nasal decongestant spray  that you’d get at the pharmacy.

And the results were: they’re equally effective! An orgasm clears out your  nose just as well as drugs. Now, the nasal decongestant does last longer.

So if you opt for the natural route, you’d need  to be up for multiple rounds of “treatment.” But the orgasm effect lasts for about an hour! Which is pretty impressive! It could be thanks to that exercise you just  put in, or it could be some kind of interplay between your sympathetic and parasympathetic  systems that get activated when you orgasm.

Either way, your nose clears up. And that’s quite a feat because  there’s a lot of stuff in there. Even just the large number of nose  hairs is something to contend with.

That’s why this next Ig Nobel winner  was such a heroic undertaking. Thank you for supporting SciShow! Thank you for being a part of this  incredible community in the comments section.

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I’ll just come out and say it. You’ve been living in your body for how many years and you still don’t know how  many nose hairs you have?! It wasn’t until 2021 that  anybody bothered to count.

And yes, they really did remove and  count each nose hair in 20 cadavers. Thank goodness they did, because now we know  that we have about 100 hairs per nostril. Yes, it’s statistically the same in the left  and right nostrils and in different sexes.

And, sure, maybe there were more  pressing scientific questions that kept us from getting to the  bottom of this question until now. But with your nose hairs as part of your  first line of defense against sickness, this wasn’t as silly of an  investigation as it sounds. And just because your nose hairs are symmetrical doesn’t mean that everything on your body is.

I mean, the left and right side of the  scrotum are different temperatures. Yeah, I kind of gave away the punchline  before we got into the research, didn’t I? But this finding is weird enough that  you should stick around for the ride.

Researchers in France measured  men’s scrotum temperatures every 2 minutes for two hours  under a few different conditions. They tested bus drivers and postal  workers in their peak reproducing years, naked and clothed, and during their  work day in different positions, like sitting, standing, and walking. And they found that at least when clothed, the left ball is hotter than  the right one across the board.

Now, they’re still within range of each other, so  it’s not like the left side is 10 degrees warmer. But they’re pretty consistently  brothers, not twins. The authors of this study think that the left  side is warmer because of the angle of the dangle.

Okay, so they didn’t say it like that. But 89% of the time that a man is wearing  clothes, the penis rests on the left testicle. So it might be an extra blanket of  warmth that the right side doesn’t get.

And, again, this is a weird finding. Maybe the study itself is even weirder. But scrotum temperature is  a big factor in fertility.

So this research matters to a lot of  people trying to grow their families. And that journey often starts with finding the  person that you want to have a family with. The next Ig Nobel Prize goes to a weird  way you can tell you’ve found the one.

Maybe you’re on a first date and  feel that click when you realize that you like the same movies or were  both your grandma’s favorite grandchild. Whatever it is, you definitely feel connected. That might be because your  heart rates have synced up.

In a study published in the journal “Nature,”  scientists were trying to figure out what’s behind that feeling. So they had participants on blind  dates hooked up to heart rate monitors and wearing spy glasses that  tracked where they were looking. You know, normal date attire.

From all of that tech, they found  a correlation between attraction and how synchronized the couple’s  heart rates were with each other. They didn’t see that correlation in the  other metrics they assessed, like where the couple were looking during the date,  which are more consciously controlled. So heart rate might be a  reflection of the natural way someone puts you at ease or gets  you excited with their own feelings.

And this might be the force that  makes you want to go on another date. In these researchers’ previous  studies, they found that it’s a good predictor for trust and cooperation. It’s the kind of thing that often syncs up  the longer you’ve been with your partner, the greater satisfaction you have with each other, and the better you become at  reading each other’s emotions.

So when you’re sussing out if you should  spend more of your time with someone, listen to your heart. …Or just look at their eyebrows. Eyebrows might not be the key  to finding everlasting love, but apparently, they can help  you steer clear of narcissists. In a Canadian study, researchers  gave participants a test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory that measures how egotistical,  self-focused and vain a person is.

With those scores in hand, the  scientists then took their pictures. And they used those photos to try to figure out what makes a person identifiably  narcissistic, just from looking at them. First, they asked a different set of  participants to judge who looked narcissistic when given an image of either just  the top or bottom half of the face.

Based on the scores, the top  half of the face was the winner. So additional judges came to look  at individual features on the faces, like the eyes and eyebrows. And those results pointed to the eyebrows  being the defining characteristic.

In the end, all it took for these participants  to identify a narcissist was a single eyebrow. And when they put the eyebrows  of non-narcissistic people onto the faces of narcissistic people,  they were rated as less narcissistic. And that’s weird.

Like, eyebrows don’t seem more  important than your mouth! But they are super expressive. So that’s probably why they matter so much.

The authors of this publication said it  might be because they’re higher contrast than some other parts of the face, but  that would depend on your coloring. The main idea is that more distinct  eyebrows are associated with narcissism. Now, should you go around judging  people based their eyebrows…no.

Hey, buddy! My eyes are down here. After all, the point is that how we read  faces is unexpected and more complicated an we thought, let alone trying  to read someone’s psychology.

But as weird as that Ig Nobel winner is, this last one will probably  raise even more eyebrows. When you’re walking somewhere  and see someone stopped, looking up at a window in a nearby  building, you might look up too. Even if there’s nothing special about that window.

A group of researchers wanted  to know how many people need to be looking up at that window  for you to stop and join them. They started out with one person looking up. As people passed by, 42%  of them looked up as well.

And 4% stopped what they were doing entirely  to stand with that person and look together. So now there are two people staring at a window. In that case, the number of people  who also look up jumps to 60%.

And by the time there’s a group of  five people looking at the window, 80% of passersby will look too. So as the initial crowd gets bigger, so do the chances that a person will look  up to see what in the world is going on. The authors of the study call it contagious.

But how contagious it is  depends on whether you just look or if you completely stop walking to gawk. The graph of people who look at  the window without missing a step toward their original destination  is an inverse exponential curve. A lot of people will do that  even if the crowd is small.

And the number grows a bit as the crowd grows. In comparison, the graph of  people who stop what they’re doing to join the crowd basically  looks like a straight line. For this much commitment from a stranger,  you generally need a larger crowd.

The number of people who stop to join the crowd is always smaller than the  number of people who keep going. But when more people join the  crowd, more people join the crowd. So yeah, we’re incredibly weird.

Enough to justify a science prize  completely dedicated to weirdness. I, for one, hope the Ig Nobel  Prizes only get stranger from here. And SciShow will let you know when  they do because SciShow video editor Seth Gliksman also serves on  the Ig Nobel Board of Governors.

Whenever a scientist publishes something  wonderfully bizarre, you’ll see it. [♪ OUTRO]