Oxford biologists’ definition of a kiss earns spoof Nobel prize

You may think that everyone knows what a kiss is, but a pair of Oxford University academics have been awarded a spoof Nobel prize for devising a scientific definition.

Dr Matilda Brindle and Prof Stuart West wanted to study the evolutionary origins of kissing, but had first to agree on a robust description of the act in question.

They finally settled on "non-agonistic interactions involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer".

That less-than-romantic account won them an Ig Nobel Prize at the annual science awards which "honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".

Dr Brindle told The Times that their definition of kissing was scientifically valid, but admitted she was "not sure I'd use it to chat somebody up".

The researchers compiled a list of monkeys and apes that have been recorded kissing, according to their definition, and cross-checked it against the primate evolutionary family tree to source the origins of the practice.

They were able to conclude that the first kisses must have been exchanged between 16.9 million and 21.5 million years ago, potentially vindicating Plato's belief that love really is older than mankind.

Their calculations also suggested a high likelihood that Neanderthals , a sister species to modern humans, also kissed.

It would be "a little strange" if Neanderthals did not kiss, Dr Brindle said, given that chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, orangutans and several species of monkey do.

Curiously, they found evidence that Neanderthals and humans exchanged oral microbes – bugs that live in the mouth – suggesting the two species were swapping saliva.

The annual awards ceremony was held in Zurich – the first time it had left the US in its 35-year history – with organisers citing academics' growing reluctance to travel to the country.

It will now be held biennially in the Swiss city with a rotating cast of other host cities, leading to comparisons to Eurovision.

The award for economics went to a team led by Paul Piff at the University of California, Irvine, whose findings suggested that the wealthy were more likely to thieve.

In one experiment, participants were told they could help themselves to sweets in a jar that were supposedly meant for children taking part in a separate study.

Those who viewed themselves as higher status tended to take more.

Posthumous award for study of nose blowing

A posthumous award was handed out in the medicine category to Tokuji Unno, a Japanese researcher at Wakayama Medical University for his 1970s paper How to Blow the Nose – An Aerodynamic Study of the Nose Blowing.

The study examined the airflow and pressure generated by different techniques, and concluded that the best way is to blow firmly for a sustained period, closing one nostril where necessary to help clear the other.

Other winners included scientists from the University of Waterloo, who were honoured for designing a splash-free urinal, and researchers from the University of Zurich, who buried 2,000 pairs of cotton underpants.

The pants were dug up two months later, and the scientists concluded that the more thoroughly they had decomposed, the healthier and more biologically active the soil around them appeared to be.

Meanwhile, researchers from McGill and Drexel universities were honoured for using a mosquito's proboscis, or mouthpart, as an ultra-fine 3D-printer nozzle, in a process they named "necroprinting".

An additional study, led by the University of Wrocław, found that babies were overwhelmingly judged by their parents to smell pleasant, but that teenagers were not.

The winners on the night were showered with paper aeroplanes and handed their prizes by genuine Nobel laureates.

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