(UPI) The Journal of Improbable Research announced this year's Ig Nobel Prize winners, including a team who researched mammals that breathe through their butts.

The 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, a tongue-in-cheek celebration of unusual scientific achievements, was held Thursday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The ceremony -- inspired by, not not affiliated with, the Nobel Prizes -- was held in-person after being held virtually for the past three years. Ten prizes were awarded at the ceremony, which was also livestreamed on YouTube.

This year's Peace Prize was posthumously awarded to B.F. Skinner for his 1960 research into whether live pigeons could be housed inside missiles to guide their flight paths.

The Botany Prize went to Jacob White and Felipe Yamashita "for finding evidence that some real plants imitate the shapes of neighboring artificial plastic plants."

The Anatomy Prize went to a team of scientists from France and Chile "for studying whether the hair on the heads of most people in the northern hemisphere swirls in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) as hair on the heads of most people in the southern hemisphere."

This year's Medicine Prize went to Lieven A. Schenk, Tahmine Fadai, and Christian Büchel, "for demonstrating that fake medicine that causes painful side-effects can be more effective than fake medicine that does not cause painful side-effects."

The Ig Nobel Physics Prize was presented to James C. Liao for his research into the swimming abilities of a deceased trout.

The Physiology Prize was presented to a team of U.S. and Japanese researchers "for discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus."

The Probability Prize went to University of Amsterdam researcher František Bartoš and his team for studying the results of 350,757 coin flips and determining coins are slightly more likely to land on the same side they started from.

The Chemistry Prize went to Tess Heeremans, Antoine Deblais, Daniel Bonn and Sander Woutersen, "for using chromatography to separate drunk and sober worms."

Saul Justin Newman was awarded the Demography Prize for his research finding that "many of the people famous for having the longest lives lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record-keeping."

The final award, the Biology Prize, was given to Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen for their 1941 research that involved "exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's standing on the back of a cow, to explore how and when cows spew their milk."

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