On Friday, August 1962, Warren Thomas, director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, shot an elephant named Taxco - when he pulled the trigger, he hit the croup. The cartridge was filled with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, which immediately entered the animal's bloodstream
The dose was 3000 times higher than what a person who wants to "unwind" could take. The results were not long in coming. Taxco ran around the enclosure for several minutes and roared loudly, and then collapsed on his side. He was dead.
Thomas and his colleagues argued that the sad outcome was the result of a scientific experiment to find out if LSD was the cause of an unusual syndrome in which elephants behave aggressively, and a viscous fluid is released from their glands. In an article about the incident sent to the American journal Science four months later, scientists concluded: "Elephants appear to be highly susceptible to the effects of LSD."
The story of the elephant Taxco was included in the "ten" of the most insane experiments carried out in the pursuit of truth. At least that's what New Scientist, which published the list today, believes. If there is only one step from genius from madness, then many of these experimenters have resolutely taken this step.
So, in the 1960s, the following experiment was carried out. 10 soldiers were put on a plane at Fort Hunter Liggett Air Force Base in California. They thought they were going on a routine study assignment. At an altitude of about 5 thousand feet, the plane suddenly banked and went into a dive. The pilot's voice was heard from the loudspeakers in the cabin: “Accident. One engine stalled, the chassis is not released. I'll try to splash down in the ocean."
The soldiers realized that the chances of salvation were slim. And then the steward handed out to everyone the forms of insurance contracts and asked them to fill out, explaining that in case of death, everything must be formalized.
The soldiers did not even suspect that they were not in danger - it was just an experiment in order to find out how the strongest stress affects a person's cognitive abilities. To test the abilities, it was just required to fill out the forms. As soon as the last soldier dealt with this, the pilot announced: "About the accident, I was just kidding, guys!"
Later, they tried to repeat the experiment on a new group of unsuspecting "volunteers", but one of the members of the first group ripped it off by writing a warning on a sanitary bag in the aircraft cabin.
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One of the most dreadful experiments on the New Scientist list was carried out by Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov. In 1954, he presented to the general public a two-headed dog created in a scientific laboratory: the head, neck and front legs of a puppy were transplanted onto the neck of an adult German shepherd. The journalists who were shown this creature noted: milk dripped from the severed neck of the puppy when he tried to lap it. Sometimes two heads quarreled: the shepherd tried to shake off the puppy, and he bite in response.
The unfortunate creature lived for six days. Over the next 15 years, Demikhov repeated the experiment 19 times. The most durable creature lived for a month. Outside the USSR, this experiment was not taken seriously, considering it a publicity stunt, but the merit of Demikhov is the development of sophisticated surgical methods that paved the way for the world's first human heart transplant.
The list also includes several attempts to unravel the mysteries of human nature. Clarence Luba, a psychologist in Yellow Springs, Ohio, decided to figure out why we laugh when tickled - is it a conditioned reflex or unconditioned. He conducted experiments on his newborn son, and then on his daughter.
And Lawrence Leshan, a scientist from Virginia, in 1942 stood in the middle of a room where a group of boys slept, repeating: "My nails taste awful bitter" to find out if using hypnopedics you can wean children from the habit of nail biting.
Physician Stubbins Firth of Philadelphia set out to prove that yellow fever is not contagious, and for this he drank fresh vomit of people suffering from this disease. It was in 1804. Firth did not get sick and said that he had proved his case. However, later scientists found out that yellow fever is extremely contagious, only it is transmitted exclusively by introducing the pathogen into the blood - for example, by a mosquito bite.
Equally flawed was the experiment by Robert Cornish of the University of California, who in the 1930s tried to bring dead animals back to life by swinging them on a swing. Only a few briefly revived, but it turned out that their brains were severely damaged.
As you'd expect, there's a sexy theme on the list of wildest experiments. While studying sexual arousal in turkeys, researchers at Penn State University became very interested in the fact that birds are trying to mate with dummies that look like real females. Scientists gradually dismantled the dummies, removing their component parts. It turned out that the males are extremely excited, even if you show them one head on a stick.
10 craziest experiments
The elephant received a large dose of LSD in order to find out if it would cause him a temporary clouding of consciousness.
Conclusion: LSD is fatal to elephants.
Plane passengers who were told they were about to die in a plane crash made more mistakes in the written test.
Conclusion: extreme stress is harmful to human cognitive abilities.
The two-headed dogs created by the Soviet surgeon lived no more than a month.
Conclusion: tissue rejection occurs, organisms of different individuals are incompatible.
A psychologist, experimenting on his own son, found out whether laughter is an innate reaction to tickling.
Conclusion: yes, it is.
A group of boys who bite their nails listened to certain phrases reproduced by an experimenter or a technical device in their sleep. The phrases were designed to wean them from a bad habit.
Conclusion: Sleep learning is possible. Other experiments have proven otherwise.
To test whether a person can fall asleep in the most unfavorable conditions, the volunteers were glued with a band-aid so that they could not close their eyes, and they shone bright lamps directly into their eyes.
Conclusion: after 12 minutes, the subjects dozed off.
People were asked to sniff ammonia, stick their hands in a bucket full of frogs, and watch porn movies.
Conclusion: disgust in different cases is mimically expressed in different ways.
The doctor rubbed the vomit of yellow fever patients into open wounds and drank it.
Conclusion: the erroneous conclusion that this disease is not contagious.
The corpses of animals were placed on a swing to resurrect the dead by restoring blood circulation.
Conclusion: two animals came to life, but their brains were damaged and vision was lost.
Dummies of turkeys were gradually dismantled in order to find out what "minimum set" the male is ready to mate with.
Conclusion: male turkeys are excited by the head of a female on a stick, but they are indifferent to a headless body