How are the heart and lungs of an anesthetized rhinoceros affected if they are hung upside down in the legs during a helicopter transport?
That question was asked by the game warden Robin Radcliffe from Cornell University and his colleagues and decided to carry out such experiments in Namibia.
This type of transport is increasingly used in Africa in order to preserve the species.
But it is only now that someone has investigated how animal health is affected.
Researchers are now being awarded the Ig Nobel Prize, which is awarded annually by the Annals of Improbable Research, a magazine for "research that makes people laugh, and then think".
This year's award ceremony was held via video call and the winners were each given a PDF file they could print and assemble into a trophy, as well as a fake 10-trillion banknote in Zimbabwean dollars.
Another winner was Swedish Susanne Schötz for her studies of cats' different sounds.
See the rhinos' flights in the clip.