Dr Darryl Gwynne from the University of Toronto, and Dr David Rentz from James Cook University in North Queesnland discovered that the male common Australian Jewel beetle, can confuse a beer bottle for a large female beetle, and in many cases decided it would be fun to mate with it.

The original study inferred that this was because of the colour and shape of the bottles, causing them to act as "supernormal releasers."

The real rub, though, is that the study was originally published in 1983. Good things come to those who wait, we suspect. Or at least, IgNobel awards for biology do.

"I'm honoured, I think," said Dr Gwynne in a press release. "The awards make people think, and they're a bit of a laugh. 

"Really, we've been sitting here by the phone for the past 20 plus years waiting for the call. Why did it take them so long?"

An award was also won by Dr David Darby from the Mental Health Research Institute in Melbourne.

He found that a full bladder can cause people to become blinkered to the world around them, impair ability to parse information and notice detail, more or less to the same extent as someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.8.

Dr Darby told the ABC that there are three possible factors behind this find.

"One possibility is the amount of pain felt by someone with a full bladder; another explanation is that the brain function involved in inhibiting urine flow is located in the inner frontal part of the brain, in close proximity to the areas responsible for motivation, attention and working memory," he said.

"The final possibility is that people simply become obsessed with holding on and can't think of anything else."

The IgNobel Prize is a light-hearted annual warm-up to the Nobel Prize awards (which begin Monday), highlighting the weird and wacky finds from the scientific community. This year was the Twenty-First 1st instalment of the prize (we're not even joking on that one.)

[via ABC]