Beer, beetle and confused sex wins prize

Never mind the Nobel Prize, the Ig Nobel is way better. Awarded to scientific endeavour that either amuses or was utterly pointless, it shows that the men and women in white coats are not all Hadron Colliders and genetic research.

Our favourite winner this year was the Australian (they had to be Australian) who were determined to investigate why a particular species of beetle had a fondness for attempting to mate with particular beer bottle.

Professor Darryl Gwynne and his colleague David Rentz were out doing some research (or so they say) when they encountered a buprestid beetle on the side of the road trying to mate with a discarded bottle.

"It was just co-incidental that my area of research was Darwinian sexual selection and how sex differences evolve, and here was a classic example taking place in front of my eyes where males were making mating errors.

"It was very obvious the beetles were trying to mate. These beetles have enormous genitalia, and they're large to start with - over two inches long. The sad thing was that these beetles were dying; they wouldn't leave the bottles alone. They'd fall off them exhausted.

"It was almost certainly the visual colour - the bottle looked like a giant female. And also in the reflectance patterns - there were stipples on the bottles that resembled marks on the females' wing covers."

The scientists wrote to the brewery, and they modified the dimples, sparing countless beetles from dying in the hunt for some lady beetle action.