Hey YouTube, Jim here! Welcome to Top 10 Archive! Even though PETA has earned the reputation for
being overly-aggressive towards those who violate animal rights - we often forget just how rampant
and cruel animal testing was in the past. Today, we’re keeping those animals' memories alive,
with this top 10 list of the most Creepy Science Experiments Done On Animals.
10. Two-Headed Dogs Starting our list out strong,
number 10 are two-headed dogs. No, it’s not from a TV show, it’s from the 1900s documentation of a
Charles Guthrie experiment in which he grafted a dog’s head onto another dog for 26 minutes.
The latter part of the experiment was replicated - who knows why - by A.G. Konevsky and Vladimir
Demikhov. It’s even said that Konevsky’s Frankenstein-like surgery was accidental,
wanting only to transplant a heart. In the end, Demikhov got most of the fame
for achieving the two-headed dog. In fact, he carried out the procedure more than 20
times in an attempt to perfect it. Of the 20, only one survived for about a month.
9. Blood of Young Mice Rejuvenates Old Mice The concept of a younger being’s heart
rejuvenating a much older one is ancient. Look at any fairy tale, or the case of Elizabeth Báthory.
Well, scientists realized those stories might not be too far off. But, still,
don’t try this at home. The researchers joined two mice together, one young and one old, to see the
effects the blood of one would have on the other. What happened next is shocking. The older mouse
started to see “reverse aging” in the brain and muscle tissues! We’re not sure whether
that’s going to be tried on humans anytime soon, but it's a bit creepy to think about.
8. Insects in the body With this one, I’m not sure
who it’s worse for, the human, or the animals. A researcher in Madagascar became very interested
in the Sand Flea’s sexual behavior. So far, a normal science thesis. Until you realize that
there’s a reason that their sexual habits are so mysterious. The Sand Flea, or Chigger Flea,
burrows into the skin of warm-blooded hosts, swells, poops, reproduces, and then dies
47 weeks later, right there in the skin. If you’re already feeling your hands sweat, just wait. The
researcher let a Chigger Flea live in her foot for two months! Her results? Groundbreaking, actually.
She found out that the fleas have sex when the females have already burrowed into their hosts.
Disgusting, but fascinating, I suppose. 7. Turkeys Aroused By Severed Heads
Ah, the 1960s. A different time, truly. Though many compare the 1960s to our current era,
I’m quite sure there are almost no researchers attempting to make turkeys necrophiliacs. But,
hey, I’m just a guy on YouTube. Researchers in Pennsylvania noted that male turkeys would
mate with fake female turkeys just as eagerly as with real ones. To see how far these male turkeys
would go in their intent to pass on their genes, they experimented. First, the theory:
they thought that if the female turkey’s head matched their expectations, little else mattered.
They started removing different parts of the model turkey, to see how far the turkeys would go
until they were no longer aroused. Even if there was only a head on a stick,
they’d find it to be super hot. Body and no head? Not so much. So what did they do
next? They crossed that line we talked about. They took a severed head of a female turkey
and put it on a stick. They did the same with a dried head of a male turkey, a two-year-old
female head, and a head made of wood. What did turkeys do? Tried to mate with all of them.
6. Human Brain... Mouse Head Researchers at the Salk Institute
started growing human brain cells by injecting fetal mice with embryonic stem cells. What does
this do? It gives you the thrill of stem cell research and the horror of transgenic research and
results in a very intelligent squirmy mouse baby. Or perhaps, a human conscience with a mice body?
We’ll never know, and it might be better that way. 5. Dolphin Gets Intimate With A Human
You heard that right. In 1967, the lines got real blurry between a dolphin and his speech trainer.
Researcher John Lilly published a book where he talked about his assistant’s relationship with
a dolphin named Peter. Her duties were to teach him to speak, and they lived together in a flooded
house for six months. They played and she taught him a few basic English words. It wasn’t long
before Peter got affectionate and even attempted to mate with Margaret. Not to lead Peter on.. she,
well, helped the dolphin with her hands. As if that wasn’t enough to get the project de-funded,
they also gave dolphins LSD in an attempt to make them talk. Someone should have told
them if they wanted to talk to dolphins, they should have just taken the drugs themselves.
4. Vacanti Mouse This mouse is pretty famous, but there's a chance
you've never seen it before. The Vacanti Mouse, otherwise known as “Earmouse”, or "Frankenmouse",
used to be the face of “science going too far”. To be precise, there was no ear “grown” on the mouse,
so it wasn’t engineered, but rather, it was just stitched onto him. The ear is molded biodegradable
mesh in the shape of an ear, and was seeded with cow cartilage. The mouse was the power source to
grow the ear, and it was done carefully, since the mouse had to have no immune system to reject the
ear. Soon, the mouse’s blood vessels infiltrated the scaffold and literally grew the ear.
3. The Lazarus Project Ah, Lazarus. If you’re familiar with
the Bible, you’ll know him as the man that Jesus resurrected, 4 days after his death. In the 1930s,
University of California researcher Robert Cornish put a theory to the test, that he could revive
dead things if their organs hadn’t been severely damaged. To achieve this, he first killed the
animals. To start, four fox terriers, all named Lazarus. Then he’d put them in a seesaw-type of
machine, which would circulate the blood by moving up and down while Cornish injected adrenaline and
anticoagulants into their bloodstreams. The first two pups never came back to life. The second two,
however, did. They were both blind and had severe brain damage, but both dogs lived for
months afterward at his home. Of course, what he had done was so horrible, that the university
kicked him out and he had to resort to other things. His next attempt? A death-row prisoner
who volunteered. The prison, with fear that he’d be free afterward, denied the experiment
and the researcher’s dreams collapsed as he lived the rest of his life as a toothpaste salesman.
2. Spider-goat Apparently, silk spiders make silk
harvesting quite a task. They’re small, they’re slow, and lab technicians milk thousands just for
a single test tube. This sounds expensive already, I'm guessing. So what was their solution? Well,
I think you already know. They took the gene that creates silk and put it into the genome of a goat.
This was at the University of Wyoming in 2010, and, to put it simply, it resulted in strands of
silk in female goat’s milk. The goats are supposed to be otherwise normal, but let's just hope they
don't evolve into actual spider-goats. 1. To Eat A Shrew
In 1994, two scientists apparently got bored and decided to swallow, digest, and excrete a northern
short-tailed shrew. Why a shrew? Why this experiment? So many questions. The New York
anthropologists skinned and disemboweled the shrew, after which they “lightly boiled” it.
Then one of them swallowed it without chewing. After it was excreted, they continued to study
it to find out how it had ended up. Most bones made it out except a jawbone, four molar teeth,
most of a leg and foot, all but one of the vertebrae, and most of the skull.
This means that all damage was done in the researcher’s body, since he hadn’t chewed
it. Essentially, they found out just how hostile the environment is in your stomach and intestines.
Study inconclusive. Maybe try a hamster this time. Thanks for watching! I know these experiments were
all a bit bizarre, but what do you think about the use of animals in scientific experimentation?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Don’t be a two-headed, indecisive YouTuber! Become a
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