Two BGU scientists awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for study on drunken bats

What happens to bats when they get drunk? Do they slur their echolocation calls? Do they fly erratically? Do they crash? The entire world wanted to know.

Well... maybe not the entire world, but Prof. Berry Pinshow and Prof. Carmi Korine of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and their (back then) two students, Dr. Francisco Sanchéz and Dr. Maru Mélcon, were pleasantly surprised that their research garnered an Ig Nobel earlier this month – 15 years after the paper was published.

It was the first Ig Nobel for BGU faculty members.

Ig Nobels have been awarded for the last 35 years for achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK. Organized by the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur interest in science.

Prof. Pinshow and Prof. Korine and their colleagues were honored for their seminal work "Ethanol Ingestion Affects Flight Performance and Echolocation in Egyptian Fruit Bats," Sánchez, F., Melcón. M., Korine, C., and Pinshow, B. 2010. Behavioural Processes, 84: 555-558. 

Not to leave you in suspense: The answer is, yes, bats that ingested ethanol flew slower and were less able to locate their roosts using their unique tongue-clicking echolocation.

"We were all absolutely chuffed when we got the news that we had won an Ig Nobel award," says Prof. Pinshow, "At first, we were a little dubious that we were being had on, but a letter from Marc Abrahams the editor of AIR settled our doubts. Then we were elated – who wouldn't be? Science is certainly serious but it's also fun and intellectually very satisfying."

Their study was inspired by Prof. Robert Dudley (UC Berkeley), author of The Drunken Monkey. Carmi Korine had met him during a post-doc in Panama.