5 of the strangest scientific experiments that were carried out in the USSR

1. Interbreeding ape with a human

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov - Soviet biologist, engaged in interspecific selection at the beginning of the 20th century. He worked on improving the process of artificial insemination of horses and creating hybrids of a zebra and a donkey, an antelope and a cow, a rat and a mouse... He also tried cross man and chimpanzee.

For what? For the sake of science, of course.

In the 1920s Ivanov had tried to impregnate female chimpanzees with human sperm, but despite all efforts, nothing good came of it. Then, in 1929, he organized experiments on the insemination of human women with the sperm of monkeys, but this initiative also did not produce results.

And after some time, Ivanov, under a political article, was sent into exile in the Kazakh SSR, where a couple of years later he died of stroke. It's a pity. Perhaps if the scientist had remained alive and continued his research, now we would already enjoy the company of anime catgirls.

2. Animation of dog heads

In the 1940s and 1950s, Soviet scientists Sergei Bryukhonenko, Boris Levinskovsky and Valery Lebedev undertook attempts to transplant the heads of one dog to another. They also created prototypes of various machines to maintain life in parts separated from the body.

In 1940, they even filmed a popular science film about it. movie "Experiments on the revitalization of the body." It showed how a severed dog's head, after a confirmed clinical death, is connected to a heart-lung machine. And she continues to live for another 9 minutes, blinking, moving her ears and licking her lips. The sight is not for the faint of heart.

3. Rejuvenation of the body with fresh blood

Alexander Bogdanov is a Soviet encyclopedic scientist, doctor and part-time science fiction writer. And also he was a zealous supporter of the theory of "exchange transfusion" - whether the profession of a doctor led to the emergence of such ideas in him, or his passion for science fiction.

The meaning of the procedure is this: a younger and healthier body gives its blood old. He rejuvenates, and voila! The recipe for eternal life is ready.

Bogdanov's theory received significant support at the top of the Soviet government. On Stalin's orders, the Institute of Blood was even created in 1926 for the research of the scientist - now it is the National Medical Research Center for Hematology. Bogdanov himself was appointed its director.

But eternal life could not be invented. Bogdanov spent experiments on himself and underwent 11 blood transfusions, assuring that these procedures improved his vision, baldness stopped and he looked 10 years younger. But during the last procedure happened rejection - O Rh incompatibility in those days they had not yet heard - and Bogdanov died.

4. Creation of Cerberus

Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov famous as one of the pioneers in the field of organ transplantation. And any. So, the professor created about 20 two-headed dogs during his experiments in East Germany.

True, extra heads in the end rejected host organism due to lack of immunosuppressants. Most of the experimental dogs died quickly, but some lived for several days, and one for three weeks.

There are even photoshow Demikhov's two-headed dog walked and drank water. Only the liquid from only one head got into the stomach - the other was tied only with the circulatory system. Therefore, what she drank last flowed onto the floor.

5. Psychic Bunny Training

Since at least the 1920s, telepathy, telekinesis, extrasensory perception, and the like have been studied in the USSR. It was assumed that since living organisms generate electrical impulses, it means that they will be able to transmit information through electromagnetic fields - like a live radio.

At the Institute for Brain Research at Leningrad State University, even deployed a program of experiments in this area - research was especially spurred by the cold war.

This question was studied both in the USSR and in the USA - all for the sake of superiority over the enemy. After all, combat psychics and sorcerers are so effective.

The practical benefits of the experiments of the USSR in the field of paranormal abilities were obvious. extrasensory perception, For example, considered as a way to anticipate and prevent accidents during spacecraft launches. And telepathy is a tool for creating an alternative to radio communications. Such signals would be impossible to intercept and locate, which is extremely useful for submarines.

For almost 20 years at the Institute of Automation and Electrometry of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok near Novosibirsk, Soviet scientists studied telepathy on rabbits, cats and dogs. In the 1960s, they conducted a curious, albeit a little cruel, experiment, the results of which were published only in 1984 in the collection "Electromagnetic fields in the biosphere".

Electrodes were implanted into the head of one rabbit. The second eared one, with whom the first one apparently had a special mental connection, was taken away and beaten with electric current. And the first rabbit reacted! At least scientists assured all in the success of the transmission of telepathic information.

True, when they tried to repeat the experiment, nothing happened. Apparently, psychic rabbits are a rarity. The activities of the laboratory were eventually curtailed.