Painting zebra stripes on cows to fend off flies, lizards' favourite pizza toppings and how booze helps you speak another language: these were some of the winners at the Ig Nobel prizes, which celebrate the sillier side of science.

The 35th edition of the annual awards, which are organised by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, was held just a few weeks before the real Nobel prizes.

Among the 10 prize winners, a team of Japanese researchers won the Ig Nobel biology prize for showing that painting zebra stripes on cows meant that flies were less likely to bite them.

Drinking alcohol can help you speak a foreign language more clearly -- within reason, according to research by a Dutch-German-UK team that won the peace prize.

They found that a small dose of alcohol, less than a pint of beer, can boost confidence. But this was only in moderation -- the researchers did not recommend using booze as a language-learning tool.

The paediatrics prize was awarded to a US duo who studied what a nursing baby experiences when its mother eats garlic.

While mothers had previously been told to eat bland food, the researchers showed that "infants savoured the flavour of garlic," prize-winner Julie Mennella told the ceremony.

The rest of the prizes went to researches on lizards' pizza preference, pasta physics, drunk bats' ability to fly, fingernails grow observation, smelly shows, the results after telling narcissists they are intelligent and the outcome of eating Teflon. (AFP)