The annual lg Nobel Prize ceremony is organized every year by the Annals of Improbable Research, a digital magazine that spotlights research that first makes people laugh and then think.
The lg Nobel Prize ceremony is normally held weeks before the actual Nobel Prizes are announced.
This year, in one of the announcements, a team of Japanese researchers won the lg Nobel Prize in biology on Thursday, September 19, 2025, for their discovery that painting cows in a zebra pattern makes them attract fewer blood-feeding insects.
It is interesting that it’s the 19th consecutive year that Japanese researchers have received an lg Nobel Prize, a satire of the Nobel Prize that honors humorous but creative research.
This year, the award ceremony was held at Boston University in Massachusetts.
A team of Japanese researchers from the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization and other researchers conducted an experiment where they painted white stripes on black cows with water-based paint to compare the number of insects that were attracted to them versus ordinary black cows.
To rule out the possibility that the paint itself was repelling insects, the researchers observed black cows painted with black stripes.
The results showed that the number of blood-sucking insects attracted to the cows with the white stripes was about half that for the cows with black stripes or no paint.
The research paper on the results was published in 2019; however, the mechanism by which the striped pattern repels insects is not fully understood, according to the group.
The paper said the economic impact of blood-sucking flies on the US cattle industry is substantial, which stands at $2.2 billion annually.
This research by the Japanese group may help address the issue of some insects that are resistant to insecticides.
Tomoki Kojima’s research on zebra-striped cows was inspired by consultations with farmers breeding Wagyu beef cattle.
At the lg Nobel Prize award ceremony, group members Kazato Oishi, associate professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Agriculture, and Sei Sato of the Aichi prefectural livestock research center humorously intervened during Kojima’s speech by bringing panels with pictures of flies drawn on them closer to him.
Kojima then took off his jacket, and what he showed was a zebra-patterned shirt to counter the disturbance, which drew applause from the audience.
Kojima wrapped up his speech and was somewhat surprised upon being the recipient of the award, saying, “I was very surprised and wondered if it was a prank. I’m honored and very happy.”
