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Australians are renowned for their love of the stubby - that small bottle of beer essential to any good barbie. Even the most besotted beer-drinking cricket fan in Melbourne, however, is unlikely to attempt to mate with their stubby -- but that didn't stop an Australian jewel beetle (Julodimorpha bakewelli) from doing just that.

Biologist Darryl Gwynne, now at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, and his colleague David Rentz, noticed the errant beetles in 1983 in Western Australia. On Thursday they were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize for their paper on the phenomenon: "Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females".

Gwynne says the bottles resemble a "super female" jewel beetle: big and orangey brown, with a slightly dimpled surface.

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