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Man becomes goat for 3 days, wins award

You have goat to see the other winners of these wacky awards, too.
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

LONDON -- Remember that guy that decided being a human is overrated and created special prostheses that allowed him to live among mountain goats in the Alps for three days?

Absolute legend, right?

Well, this hero is finally receiving the acclaim that he deserves.


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In September 2014, UK-based designer Thomas Thwaites decided to forego his bipedal existence in order to fully immerse himself in both the cognitive and physical aspects of a goat's life. He has written about his experiences in a novel: GoatMan: How I took a Holiday from Being Human.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In recognition of his accomplishments, Thwaites was jointly awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in biology along with naturalist and fellow Briton Charles Foster to recognize both mens' work living among members of the animal kingdom.

Thwaites told Mashable, "It’s an honour, genuinely, to get an Ig Nobel”.

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The Ig Nobel Prizes are a spoof awards institution housed at Harvard University in the U.S., and they "honor achievements that makes people laugh, and then think".

Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Other 2016 Ig Nobel laureates include characters that have made similarly wonky contributions to science:

The late Ahmed Shafik of Egypt won the reproduction prize for his work to understand the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats.

The peace prize was awarded to a group of U.S. and Canadian scholars who conducted a study entitled: "On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit".

Swede Fredrik Sjöberg took home the literature prize for his three-volume autobiographical work about the pleasures of collecting flies that are dead, and flies that are not yet dead.

You can read the full list of this year's winners and past recipients here.

Topics Animals

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