Among the funniest researches that have been awarded the 2011 Ig Noble Prize - a spoof of the prestigious Noble Prize - is a paper that highlighted the copulation patterns of male Australian jewel beetles with "stubby" beer bottles!

The research on the beer bottle-mating beetles was carried out by Professor Darryl Gwynne of the University of Toronto and his Australian colleague David Rentz. The 1983 paper that they submitted was titled: ‘Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females.’

It was during the course of their field work in Western Australia that Gwynne and Rentz observed male Australian jewel beetles making attempts to inch atop or along the side of some disposed-off “stubbies” – that is, brown beer bottles.

Pointing out that ‘stubbies’ are similar in appearance to a "super female" jewel beetle --- both in terms of shape and their orangey-brown colour, Gwynne said that the faintly dimpled base of the bottles apparently attracts the male jewel beetles because it reflects light in a way that female wing covers do --- now wonder the lusty male beetles fry themselves to death in scorching heat trying to mate with the bottles!

In their paper, the authors said that along with being a physical and `visual' hazard in the environment, the improperly disposed beer bottles have the potential to “cause great interference with the mating system of a beetle species.”

On winning the Ig Noble Prize for the research, Gwynne said: “I'm honoured, I think”!