Thread: Elephants on Acid

The thirst for knowledge often inspires research with life-changing results. But it can also fuel experiments that range from the slightly silly to the downright disgusting.

Now a list of the most amusing, provocative and outrageous experiments of modern science has been compiled by author Alex Boese, who scoured research journals, books and university archives.

Topics covered include what happens when you give an elephant LSD and how to make a turkey frisky.

Featured in this week's New Scientist magazine, his book, Elephants On Acid And Other Bizarre Experiments, also tells of attempts to bring dead dogs back to life.



Forty-five years ago, two psychiatrists administered history's largest dose of LSD to Tusko, a three-and-a-half ton elephant.

The 14-year-old male was given enough acid to make 3,000 people hallucinate, in a bizarre bid to find out whether it would trigger a temporary form of madness called musth, in which bull elephants become sexually aggressive.

Whatever the intentions of the University of Oklahoma researchers, the experiment backfired within seconds of the drug being injected into Tusko's rump on a hot August day in 1962.

The horrified creature trumpeted round its pen in Oklahoma City's Lincoln Park Zoo for a few minutes, before keeling over and dying shortly afterwards. Faced with a public outcry, researchers Louis Jolyon West and Chester M Pierce noted they had taken the LSD in the past without fatal consequences - and suggested the drug could be used to destroy herds in countries where they cause a problem.



In 1954 Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov unveiled a two-headed dog, created by grafting the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy on to the neck of a mature German shepherd.

When one head wanted to eat, so did the other. When it was hot, both panted. When one yawned so, did the other.

But the older dog occasionally tried to shake the foreign head off its neck.

The puppy retaliated by biting its larger companion on the ear. Twenty such creatures were created. None lived longer than a month, but the work is seen as paving the way for human heart transplant surgery.



With the help of a series of fox terriers named Lazarus, researcher Robert E Cornish tried to hone a technique for raising the dead.

In the 1930s, the University of California biologist seesawed the canine corpses up and down to circulate the blood, while injecting a mixture of adrenaline and anti-coagulants.

Some did stir back to life, and despite being brain damaged, they lived on for months. In 1947, armed with a heart-lung machine made from items including a vacuum cleaner blower, he announced he was ready to experiment on a human.

A death row prisoner volunteered, but Cornish was refused permission.

Elephants on LSD: The ten silliest experiments of all time | the Daily Mail

Originally Posted by Clockwork Orange

A death row prisoner volunteered, but Cornish was refused permission.

"You are sentenced to hang by the neck until dead" wouldn't serve as much of a deterrent had Cornish succeeded.

I find this a bit of a stretch.

In 1954 Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov unveiled a two-headed dog, created by grafting the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy on to the neck of a mature German shepherd.

When one head wanted to eat, so did the other. When it was hot, both panted. When one yawned so, did the other.

But the older dog occasionally tried to shake the foreign head off its neck.

The puppy retaliated by biting its larger companion on the ear. Twenty such creatures were created. None lived longer than a month, but the work is seen as paving the way for human heart transplant surgery.