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A team of Japanese and American researchers was awarded the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in physiology on Sept. 12 for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses.

This marks the 18th consecutive year that a Japanese researcher has been honored with the Ig Nobel Prize, which recognizes “research that makes people laugh and then think.”

The prize is awarded by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

“This will be a great boost for advancing our research,” said Takanori Takebe, the research team’s leader, after receiving the award. 

Takebe is a professor of regenerative medicine at Tokyo Medical and Dental University and Osaka University.

The team’s research was inspired by the unusual breathing of the loach, a freshwater fish.

When Takebe and his team were studying the respiration methods of various creatures to develop treatments for respiratory failure in humans, they noted that loaches can breathe through their intestines.

Although loaches breath through their gills underwater like most fish, they can also perform intestinal respiration, inhaling air through their mouths at the water’s surface, absorbing oxygen via their intestines and expelling the remaining air bubbles through their anuses.

The researchers began to wonder if mammals might also be able to breathe through their intestines in the same way.

“The anus was a natural route for using the intestines for respiration without surgery,” said Toyofumi Yoshikawa, a professor of respiratory surgery at Nagoya University.

In an experiment, the team injected oxygen through the anuses of mice in low-oxygen conditions.

As a result, the mice showed some recovery from respiratory failure and a significant increase in survival rate, proving that mammals can absorb oxygen through their intestines.

The team also developed a method for potential use in humans by injecting oxygen or oxygen-rich liquid into the rectum through the anus. They named the technique “enteral ventilation via anus (EVA).”

When the team tested it on mice and pigs in low-oxygen environments, the method was found to increase their blood oxygen levels.

The research was published in 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the number of patients with severe respiratory failure was rising, and the demand for ventilators and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) was increasing.

There are hopes that intestinal breathing could become a new treatment for respiratory failure in the future.

“The Ig Nobel Prize, which makes people laugh and think, perfectly fits our hopes that more people will take an interest and expand this field of research,” Takebe said.

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