Green | October 31, 2007 | 6 comments

Elephant on acid, dog head grafts

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/nov/01/research

Image
Mr_Costello
Madness or genius? Magazine compiles list of most bizarre tests ever conducted in name of scientific inquiry. One Friday in August 1962 Warren Thomas, director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, raised his rifle and took aim at Tusko the elephant. With a squeeze of the trigger he scored a direct hit on the animal's rump, firing a cartridge full of the hallucinogenic drug LSD into the animal's bloodstream.

The dose was 3,000 times what a human might take for recreational purposes, and the results were extraordinary. Tusko charged around and trumpeted loudly for a few minutes before keeling over dead.

Thomas and his colleagues maintained the mishap was the result of a scientific experiment to investigate whether LSD brought on an unusual condition in which elephants become aggressive and secrete a sticky fluid from their glands. In a report of the incident submitted to the US journal Science four months later, the team concluded: "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD."
  1. groups:
    News and Politics,   Green,   WTF,   Random,   3 more
  2. tags:
    News and Politics,  WTF,  Not News,  Green,  8 more
  3.     
    |

6 comments // Elephant on acid, dog head grafts

  • Vierotchka
    • 0
      Vierotchka  

    • I remember at the time when this Soviet scientist had kept severed dogs' heads alive for a few days. I was both fascinated and repulsed... This video shows the puppy dog's head and forelimbs grafted onto the neck of a full-grown dog. It is not a very good quality of video, and the narration is in Russian. I love animals, and I hate to see them used and abused this way.

    • 4 years ago
  • johnschaaf
    • 0
      johnschaaf  

    • I used to work for one of the men involved in this experiment. According to him it was not so much the LSD but the attempts to udo the effects with Thorazine and pentobarbital that killed the elephant. I have never seen an official account of the incident so I don't know which account is true. The incident made a lasting impression on him though. He had quite a collection of elephant figurines, possibly started when he recieved one as a joke. I have a rather nice carved aluminum sculpture I rescued from the trash after he left it behind when he left the company.

    • 4 years ago
  • phukna
  • critter
    • 0
      critter  

    • Here's a video about the Milgram experiment. Conducted by Stanley Milgram, this experiment measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure. Creepy Stuff.

    • 4 years ago
  • Swiyyah
  • joshuaheller
more from Green:
from the community

top videos