This year's slate of Ig Nobel Prize winners include researchers who painted cows like zebras and a team who analyzed the pizza preferences of lizards.

Sept. 19 (UPI) -- The Annals of Improbable Science announced this year's slate of Ig Nobel Prize winners, including researchers who painted cows like zebras and a team who analyzed the pizza preferences of lizards.

The 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held Thursday evening in Boston and featured Nobel laureates handing out awards for scientific research that makes "people laugh, then think."

"The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology," the official website states.

This year's Literature Prize was awarded posthumously to William Bean, "for persistently recording and analyzing the rate of growth of one of his fingernails over a period of 35 years."

The Psychology Prize went to Marcin Zajenkowski and Gilles Gignac, who analyzed how receiving high IQ scores relates to "temporary state narcissism."

This year's Nutrition Prize was awarded to Daniele Dendi, Gabriel H. Segniagbeto, Roger Meek and Luca Luiselli, who determined rainbow lizards at a seaside resort in Togo prefer four-cheese to other varieties of pizza.

Julie Mennella and Gary Beauchamp received the Pediatrics Prize for looking into what a nursing infant experiences when their mother eats garlic.

Japanese researchers Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima, Naoto Aoki, Say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Ueda, Hiroyuki Hirooka and Katsutoshi Kino were awarded the Biology Prize for experiments that determined cows painted with zebra-like stripes were 50% less likely to be bitten by flies.

The Chemistry Prize was presented to Rotem Naftalovich, Daniel Naftalovich and Frank Greenway for experiments that analyzed whether eating Teflon, a plastic scientifically known as polytetrafluoroethylene, would be an effective way to increase food volume without extra calories.

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize was presented to Fritz Renner, Inge Kersbergen, Matt Field and Jessica Werthmann, whose study found that "drinking alcohol sometimes improves a person's ability to speak in a foreign language."

Indian researchers Vikash Kumar and Sarthak Mittal received the Engineering Design Prize "for analyzing, from an engineering design perspective, how foul-smelling shoes affect the good experience of using a shoe-rack."

The Aviation Prize went to Francisco Sánchez, Mariana Melcón, Carmi Korine and Berry Pinshow for a study into how alcohol ingestion affects the ability of bats to fly and echolocate.

The Ig Nobel Prize for Physics was given to Giacomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello, Matteo Ciarchi, Alberto Corticelli, Ivan Di Terlizzi, Fabrizio Olmeda, Davide Revignas and Vincenzo Maria Schimmenti for analyzing the properties of pasta sauce, "especially the phase transition that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause of unpleasantness."

"Digestion" was the theme of this year's ceremony, which featured guest speakers including Trisha Pasricha, who studied the link between using a smartphone on the toilet and developing hemorrhoids. It also featured the performance of a mini-opera titled The Plight of the Gastroenterologist.