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Throughout the ages, scientists have conducted animal experiments in their pursuit of knowledge. While many of these studies seemed reasonable, some teetered on the edge of the absurd. A few were so outlandish that they prompt the question, 'What on Earth were they thinking?'
10. Dogs with Two Heads
It sounds like something from an X-Files episode, but history is filled with well-documented cases of scientists successfully grafting one dog's head onto another. In the early 1900s, American researcher Charles Guthrie managed to create a two-headed dog that lived for a mere 26 minutes. During the Cold War, Russian scientists A.G. Konevsky and Vladimir Demikhov independently replicated Guthrie’s work, with Demikhov perfecting the procedure. He performed the experiment 20 times, with one of the dogs surviving for up to a month.
9. Severed Heads Aroused Male Turkeys
In the 1960s, researchers Martin Schein and Edgar Hale from Pennsylvania discovered that male turkeys were just as eager to mate with female turkey models as they were with live females. Fascinated, the duo ran a series of increasingly bizarre experiments. They hypothesized that male turkeys were particularly fixated on the female’s head. They began by removing parts of the model's body one by one, until only a head on a stick remained. Still, the male turkeys remained aroused, even preferring the head to the headless body. The experiment took a truly strange turn when the researchers attached a real severed female turkey’s head to the stick, alongside a dried male head, an aged female head, and a balsa wood head. The male turkeys attempted to mate with every single one of them.
8. Monkey Head Transplant
Robert White, an American scientist, is credited with performing the first true head transplant. While Demikhov had grafted an additional head onto a dog's body, White pushed the boundaries further by transplanting a severed monkey head onto another monkey's decapitated body in the 1970s. Prior to this, White had successfully transplanted a dog's brain onto another dog and kept a monkey’s brain alive outside its body. After the operation, the decapitated monkey revived briefly, even attempting to bite a member of White’s team. However, since there was no method to reconnect the brain to the spinal cord, the monkey was unable to move its body. It lived for only a day and a half before passing away. White never had the opportunity to attempt the procedure on humans, but modern scientists suggest that human head transplants could become a reality within this century.
7. Franken Kitty
In 1817, German scientist Karl August Weinhold embarked on an experiment that blended science with horror. He believed the human brain functioned like a battery, connected to the body via 'wires'—the nervous system. In an attempt to demonstrate his theory, he conducted a chilling experiment on a kitten. Weinhold described the gruesome details of his work as follows:
“[The] animal lost all life, all sensory functions, voluntary muscle movement, and eventually its pulse. Afterward, I filled both cavities with the aforementioned amalgam (zinc and silver). For almost 20 minutes, the animal experienced such intense life tension that it raised its head, opened its eyes... eventually got up with obvious effort, hopped around, and collapsed, exhausted.”
While Weinhold’s experiment might seem insane and unethical today, it occurred during a time when the scientific world was obsessed with the idea of reviving the dead. In fact, a year after his experiment, Mary Shelley released her famous novel, Frankenstein, which captivated the imagination of many.
6. The Lazarus Project
In the 1930s, Robert Cornish, a researcher at the University of California, believed he could bring dead organisms back to life, provided they hadn’t suffered severe organ damage. He asphyxiated four fox terriers, each named ‘Lazarus’ after the biblical figure resurrected by Jesus, and placed them in a strange contraption resembling a seesaw. This device moved up and down to circulate the dogs' blood, while Cornish injected them with a mixture of adrenaline and anticoagulants.
Although his first two attempts failed, Cornish succeeded with the last two dogs. Lazarus 3 and Lazarus 4, though blinded and suffering from severe brain damage, lived for several months in Cornish’s home. Cornish’s controversial experiments led to his expulsion from the university, forcing him to set up a makeshift lab near his residence. In 1947, Cornish sought a human volunteer for his new resurrection machine. A prisoner on death row, Thomas McMonigle, offered to participate, but officials feared the legal implications and declined. Cornish’s dreams shattered, he went on to live the remainder of his life selling toothpaste.
5. Shock The Puppy Experiment
In a more extreme variation of the notorious Milgram experiment, researchers C.L. Sheridan and R.G. King decided to take things further. They speculated that some participants might have doubted whether their human subject was genuinely feeling the electric shocks, so they opted to replace the victim with a live puppy. Although the shocks were harmless, they were still strong enough to elicit visible responses from the puppy. After analyzing the results, the researchers were stunned to find that all the women in the study (13 women) administered the shocks all the way to the maximum level, while half of the men stopped when they believed the shocks were too severe.
4. An Elephant Tripping on LSD
In 1962, researchers Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce from Oklahoma wanted to test the effects of LSD on an elephant. They found a suitable subject in a zoo elephant named Tusko. With the help of zoo director Warren Thomas, they shot a syringe containing 297 milligrams of LSD directly into Tusko’s hindquarters, a dose 3,000 times stronger than a typical human dose. The researchers stated that their goal was to see if LSD could induce musth, a period of temporary aggression in male elephants, which is why they chose such an extraordinarily high dose.
The outcome was less than impressive: Almost immediately, Tusko started moving in an erratic manner before suddenly collapsing and dying. The failed experiment made headlines, forcing the researchers to reconsider their approach. Thomas suggested that LSD could potentially be used to control large and unruly elephant herds. Four months later, the researchers published the obvious conclusion in a scientific journal: Elephants were highly sensitive to LSD.
3. The Headless Dog Experiment
In 1928, Russian scientist Sergei Brukhonenko startled his Soviet colleagues with an extraordinary life-support machine. Dubbed the “autojector,” it was designed to keep a head alive through continuous blood circulation, even while the body underwent major surgery. To demonstrate its functionality, Brukhonenko showcased a film showing what seemed to be a decapitated dog’s head responding to various stimuli. The head blinked when light was directed at its eyes, and it twitched when a hammer was struck nearby. Finally, the head ate a piece of cheese through an esophageal tube. This controversial experiment has been widely debated and has never been independently verified.
2. Jellyfish in Space
In an effort to study how space travel might affect humans born in orbit, Dr. Dorothy Spangenberg of Eastern Virginia Medical School decided to send jellyfish to space. With no better ideas, she and her team launched 2,478 baby jellyfish aboard the Columbia space shuttle on June 5, 1991. Once in orbit, the jellyfish adapted quickly to their new environment, and their numbers soared to 60,000.
After being returned to Earth, the jellyfish that had traveled through space were observed to have significant “pulsing abnormalities,” which, in simpler terms, meant they experienced vertigo due to their inability to adjust to gravity. Scientists hypothesized that humans, who have similar gravity-sensing mechanisms as jellyfish, would face similar difficulties if born in space.
1. Dolphin Forms Intimate Bond with Human
In 1967, researcher John Lilly released his controversial book The Mind of The Dolphin, in which he described his assistant Margaret Howe’s experience living with a male dolphin named Peter and teaching him to communicate. The pair spent six months in a submerged house where Margaret taught Peter basic English and interacted with him. Over time, Peter grew more affectionate and attempted to mate with Margaret. Eventually, Margaret consented, stroking his “dolphinhood” with both hands and feet, even when others were present. By the end of the experiment, she believed Peter trusted her enough to be intimate with her. The experiment significantly tarnished Lilly's reputation when it was revealed that he also gave dolphins LSD to aid in their communication efforts.
