A study into the slippery nature of banana peel has won the coveted Ig Nobel Prize for all-round improbable research.
The spoof awards aims to celebrate some of science's more quirky endeavours and this year it quite rightly recognised this study of slipping on a banana as one of the most pointless ever conducted.
The BBC reports that the group from Kitasato University, Japan measured the friction of banana peel compared to other fruits in order to better understand why we always slip on them and perhaps explain why it's always funny.
Incredibly while the research has little to no real affect on whether you can avoid slipping on a banana it does actually contribute to real-world science.
The team have discovered that the gels which give bananas their slippery nature can also be found in human joints, potentially furthering the research into artificial joints.
Along with bananas other winners included a team that studied the brains of people who see jesus in toast as well as another team which asked whether it was mentally hazardous to own a cat.
Probably one of the best titled winners was the team which won the Art prize for 'measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.'