A frog pregnancy test, also known as the Hogben test, is a woman’s urine. female frog It was done by injecting it under the skin. If the frog lays eggs 12 or 24 hours after this procedure, the result was positive.

So frogs, interestingly enough, Ladies she was able to detect the hormone HGG (human chorionic gonadotropin), which heralds pregnancy. So far everything is fine, but how and how was it discovered that a frog would work in a pregnancy test?

This test was invented in 1930 by British biologist Lancelot Hogben.

African barn frog

The biologist wanted to design a pregnancy test in his own way and did research with animals that he could use as test subjects. Meanwhile, while Hogben was teaching in South Africa, Xenopus He learned that frogs (African veiled) are sensitive to hormone changes. Then, in 1937, the biologist, along with animal geneticist Francis Albert Eley Crew, brought 1500 Xenopus frogs from South Africa to England.

Within two years, they wondered if they could use the frogs for pregnancy tests and did several studies. For example, the most notable of these are the hormones produced by the pituitary gland of an ox (the place in the brain that controls the release of hormones) to these animals. inject they have had.

This is how women’s urine was injected into the frog’s skin

When they saw the frog start laying eggs, a light went on in their head and they did. in women They also wanted to try. Because it is already known that the urine of pregnant women contains hormones (including HGG) that are produced in the pituitary gland and affect the development of the ovaries.

Lancelot Hogben

The researchers found the test was successful when they tried it on women, and then thought about expanding the test medically. Because the reputation of this initiative became so great during that time, several researchers also conducted a large number of studies. frog Tried this test on it.

Moreover, there were indeed very small margins of error in the final result. For example once 150 frogs In other words, it would be more accurate to say that even if the person was pregnant, the frogs wouldn’t be able to test it.

So how did women use this test?

When this test was actively used in the 1940s, women were instantly… from the pharmacy Of course they could not provide this test. It was just like this: Let’s say you’re a doctor’s patient. That doctor ordered the test from the labs where this test was performed, and he called you and performed the procedure.

In fact, frogs weren’t the first animals to be used as test subjects to detect pregnancy.

Disturbing display of mouse AZ testing

For example, the first attempt on this subject was made in 1927 by the German scientists Bernhard Zondek and Selmar Aschheim. “AZ test” was done with it. This test was performed by injecting immature female mice with the urine of a pregnant woman for several days.

Then, unfortunately, the mice’s bodies were dismembered and their ovaries checked to see if they were larger than normal. Let’s say that the animal’s ovary was large, then it was understood that the woman was pregnant. Because this showed that a mouse was sexually mature, it was thought that these were data revealing pregnancy. But as you can see, hurt animals and kill them It was a method.

Later, the same method was tried on rabbits. However, there was no reduction in animal slaughter. Imagine, every year only for this test 6,000 the rabbit was killed. That’s why experts say frogs are more suitable for this kind of experiment. Frogs, for example, are animals that can live for 30 years in a lab environment, as long as such medical experiments don’t kill them. So for a pregnancy test, a frog was preferred because it could be used over and over and this test didn’t kill it.

When modern pregnancy tests came to light, frog shoes were thrown on the roof.

In the 1960s, with the advent of tests that gave the result of pregnancy by peeing on a stick, frog tests were no longer performed. So, since the Hogben test became obsolete, frogs in the lab have been released into the wild. After that, these animals destroyed hundreds of living species. chytridiomycosis They were suspected of carrying a fungal disease called Although veiled frogs were thought to contract this disease by eating anything that came their way because of their appetite, these claims could not be proven.

In fact, even today, in many studies around the world, frogs topic means they are used as a variety of studies on frogs for difficult-to-diagnose conditions, from heart disease to kidney disease.

Eben Kirksey

An anthropologist and performance artist who even questioned whether a pregnancy test with African veiled frogs was right. Eben Kirkseyconducted an interesting experiment in 2012. Kirksey wanted to use the Hogben test to find out whether a total of three women, one of whom was in vitro fertilization, were pregnant by purchasing frogs from a company that somehow supplied these frogs. And he did it in front of everyone in Brooklyn.

How to say: The expert injected the female’s urine into the animal and waited for the frog to lay eggs in a live broadcast that was watched by 130 people. None of the audience could see the frog laying eggs, only 1-2 people as time went on. to stain He said he saw similar signs.

After this procedure, Kirksey asked women to apply today’s pregnancy test. The result was interesting because pregnancy tests all three were negative. In the end, Kirksey said this frog test really works. Well, have you heard of frogs being used for pregnancy tests before, or first heard about them in this article? You can share your thoughts with us in the comments.

• Sources: Business Insider, the Atlantic Ocean
• Image Sources: The spin-off, Yahoo News Canada