Researchers who dangled a dozen endangered rhinos upside down earn Ig Nobel

What happens when you hang a rhinoceros upside down? That's what a group of researchers from Cornell University and Namibia's Ministry of Environment wanted to find out. So they dangled a dozen tranquilized black rhinos from a crane — and earned an award for their work.

Science humor magazine Improbable Research awarded the study an Ig Nobel — a takeoff on the famed Nobel Prize — for transportation, one of 10 research projects cited Thursday "for achievements that first make people laugh then make them think." The study tested how rhinos fare upside down because that's increasingly how conservationists move the critically endangered animals — suspended from a helicopter with a 130-foot chain while the 1,400-pound mammals are relocated either for their protection or to ensure genetic diversity in breeding efforts. According to the researchers, nobody had ever checked to see if the health of a tranquilized rhino was compromised when being airlifted upside down.