Ever wondered how far a penguin can fire waste from its anus?

Top billing went to the [Ig Nobel] award for fluid dynamics, shared by Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow, of the International University Bremen, and Jozsef Gal, of Lorand Eotvos University in Hungary, "for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin".

In a videotaped acceptance speech, Dr Meyer-Rochow said the research began in 1993 when he led the first and only Jamaican expedition to the Antarctic.

Years later, while showing students pictures of the faeces-lined nests where penguins lived, he was asked how the displays were created. "They get up, move to the edge of the nest, turn around, bend over and shoot," he said. "We got the idea to calculate what pressure is produced by a penguin's poo."