14 DAY TRIAL // Rock stars are crazy people, and do some really crazy things both on stage and in real life. Scientists, on the other hand, are very much down to earth and always rely on their wits to guide their every step. Right? Actually, wrong. Very wrong.
Check out the following top five of wacky and downright dumb scientific experiments and see for yourselves.
5. Scientists Inject Elephant with LSD
In 1962, a bunch of guys at the University of Oklahoma injected an adult male elephant with almost 300 milligrams of LSD. Apparently, nobody had ever done this before (I wonder why) and they wanted to see whether or not the elephant would turn violent and impossible to control.
‘Cause, you know, when you’re dealing with a 7,000-pound animal, using lab-made chemical compounds to get it really angry should definitely be the first thing on your to-do list.
Sources say it only took about five minutes for the elephant to fall to the ground and start convulsing. Despite efforts to revive it (i.e. injecting loads of other chemicals in its body), it passed away about one hour and forty minutes after it had been administered LSD.
“Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily onto his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus. (…) The mouth was open, but breathing was extremely labored and stertorous, giving the impression of high respiratory obstruction due to laryngeal spasm. The tongue, which had been bitten, was cyanotic,” the researchers wrote in a paper describing this experiment.
Well, congratulations! You tortured an innocent animal for nothing. And you didn’t even manage to make it angry.
4. Researchers Find a Turkey Is Willing to Mate with a Head on a Stick
Back in the 60s, researchers Martin Schein and Edgar Hale of the University of Pennsylvania made an utterly mind-blowing scientific discovery. Long story short, they found that a male turkey would not say “no” to the possibility of mating with a head on a stick.
It would, however, shy away from the idea of mating with a headless body.
In order to reach these conclusions concerning the bird’s preferences in terms of girlfriends, the scientists put it in the same room with a lifelike model of a female turkey.
Naturally, the male bird showed interested. Oddly enough, it continued to show interest even when the researchers started to remove bits and pieces of the model, until all there was left was a head on a stick, sources tell us.
Yup, the bird actually tried to mate with the head. Actually, it tried to mate with the stick that was holding it, but let’s not go into details.
Later, when the turkey was introduced to a headless body, it showed no amorous intentions. The researchers theorized this was because male turkeys were more interested in faces than they were in the rest of the body.
3. Brainiac Creates Dog with Two Heads and Six Legs
I know this sounds much like something Dr. Frankenstein would do, hence the fact that some might jump to the conclusion that it’s pure fiction. But such conclusions would be erroneous, to say the least.
In 1954, researcher Vladimir Demikhov created a dog with two heads and six legs. He did this by surgically removing the head, the shoulders and the front legs of a puppy from the rest of the animal’s body and grafting them on the back of a German shepherd.
Don’t freak out, but it appears that the puppy head was very much alive. It drank milk but, because its esophageal tube wasn’t connected to anything, the milk always ended up on the floor. After it had dirtied the German shepherd’s fur, that is.
Needless to say, the creature did not live very long. The scientist created several others of its kind in the years to come, of which only one managed to survive for about a month.
Good luck sleeping tonight!
2. Scientist Keeps Severed Dog Head Alive
One has to admit, a severed dog head that’s still alive and can even respond to stimuli is way creepier than a two-headed, six-legged monster.
Back in the 1920s, surgeon Sergei Brukhonenko made quite a lot of jaws drop when he unveiled a dog head that had been separated from the rest of the animal’s body and that was kept alive by a machine that made sure it got all the blood and oxygen it needed.
Much like the puppy head in the previous experiment, this one reacted to whatever was happening around it. Thus, sudden movements made it flinch, and bright lights made it blink.
It also tried to feed, yet whatever food it ingested did not take long to come out the other side.
And you thought monsters in Greek mythology were scary! At least they were pure fiction. I hope.
1. Scientist Rubs Vomit on His Body, Pours Some in His Eyes, Even Drinks a Glass or Two
Towards the beginning of the 19th century, doctor Stubbins Firth from Philadelphia was desperate to prove that yellow fever was not contagious, and that people got it after being exposed to a tad too much heat and noise.
He also suspected it was caused by certain foods that people ate during summertime.
The way he saw things, the best way to prove this theory was to show people that, no matter how hard he tried, there was no way for him to get yellow fever from another person.
So he got some vomit from a yellow-fever patient. And then he took a knife, cut himself in a few key places and rubbed vomit on the wounds.
That didn’t work, so he also dripped some of the puke into his eyes. He still didn’t get sick, so he cooked some and ate it. He even made pills and swallowed them.
Eventually, he grabbed hold of a glass full of puke and drank it all. Luckily for him, he remained yellow-fever free.
Unfortunately for him, it was later discovered that yellow fever is indeed contagious. The only reason why Doctor Stubbins Firth did not get it from vomit is because this disease is only transmitted through the blood stream.
Well, there you have it. Five wacky experiments that will probably never cease to amaze mankind. Here’s hoping no others of their kind will be carried out in the future.
