Editor | On 06, May 2018

Darrell Mann

If in doubt, revert to cute cat pictures. Especially ones where the subjects have squeezed themselves into confined spaces. The Internet is full of them. Principle 29 rules.

But then, it turns out, the subject is deemed worthy of real academic analysis. Well, almost real: the author is French ?…

In true ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ fashion, the author takes his inspiration from an article called ‘cats are liquids’, taken from the esteemed journal, boredpanda.com. He then proceeds to use some science to define what ‘liquid’ means:

And from here, we see:

And then:

Sadly, from this promising start, the study ran into a few problems. And so ultimately, all we’re left with is this tantalizing finale:

The paper was one of the big winners at this year’s Ig Nobel Awards ceremony. This is where you need to go to find out the other winners: http://www.improbable.com/ig/winners/

Personally, I’m still debating whether the Peace Prize winners, a joint team from Switzerland, Canada, The Netherlands and USA, with their work demonstrating that regular playing of a didgeridoo is an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea and snoring, or the Economics Prize, presented to a joint US, Australia team for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person’s willingness to gamble, should have won the overall Award. Ultimately, it just goes to show, Principle 29 Cats always trump Principle 18 (didgeridoos) and Principle 38 (crocodiles).