Chickens prefer hunky men and long-haired ladies. Credit: © GettyImages

Swedish scientists have scooped an Ig Nobel Prize for demonstrating that chickens prefer beautiful humans.

The trophies, which offer an antidote to next week's more serious Nobel's, honour research that makes people laugh, then think. "There are many people who have done work that will never win a Nobel Prize, but that deserve recognition," says organiser Marc Abrahams.

The winning team trained birds to peck portraits of preference1. The fowl favoured hunky guys and longhaired ladies with bee stung lips - as did Swedish college students.

This suggests that man and chicken share similar wiring, explains co-author Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University. It could be one in the eye, he suggests, for the evolutionary theory that we chose 'fit' mates to share their genes with our offspring.

The team fought off over 5000 competitors vying for awards in ten categories to bag the Interdisciplinary Research Prize. The Physics Prize went to Australian researchers who determined the best floor to drag sheep across for shearing2.

Sloping, slatted, wooden platforms are preferable, explains independent occupational safety consultant John Culvenor from Melbourne. "It's a serious problem," he says. Sheep shearers often develop back trouble from hauling animals across unsuitable surfaces.

Sloping, slatted, wooden platforms are preferable for sheep dragging. Credit: © J. Culvenor

"The prizes are great for getting people interested in science," says neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire from University College London. Her team carried off the coveted Medicine Prize for showing that London taxi drivers have bigger brains.

The rear part of the hippocampus - an area involved in learning and memory - may grow as cabbies learn routes and shortcuts3. The finding could help researchers develop stroke rehabilitation programs.

A case of homosexual necrophilia in ducks and a chemical analysis of a Japanese pigeon-repelling statue also received awards.

Winners collected their trophies - nanometre-long gold bars - last night from genuine Nobel laureates before a paper-airplane-throwing audience of 1200 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scientists can nominate themselves and others, but an undisclosed board of Ig Nobel governors chose the victors.