Funny business, with (but without) ostriches

A new industry, launched with high hopes and fairly lavish funding, hit a wall. They called in scientists to try to understand what was going wrong. The scientists found something most unexpected.

That, friends, is what led to publication of the study "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain," which in turn led to the awarding of the 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in biology to the scientists.