Scientific Studies That Sound Like the Beginning of a Horror Movie
Animal testing is an unfortunate but necessary part of certain scientific fields — that is, until the scientists decide to go all Dr. Moreau on some rats. Then it’s just weird. It’s like they’ve never seen a single monster movie. If they had, they’d know they often begin with the unethical laboratory creation of a creature such as…
The Spider Goat
Spider silk is super useful for a lot of different things, but there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of spider farms. In 2012, Utah State University geneticists rectified that problem by splicing spider DNA into goat embryos, who eventually grew up to lactate spider silk. A spider goat might not seem that scary — it would probably just bleat at you even if its eight little legs got close enough to do any damage — but do you want one in the room with you?
The Man Mice
In 2013, scientists at the University of Rochester implanted human glial brain cells into the brains of newborn mice, who became much smarter and learned faster than other mice as a result. They may have proved that glial cells play an important role in learning that we’ve previously overlooked, but they also definitely created a race of supervillains.
Acid Elephant
In the ‘60s, experimenting with LSD was all the rage, in both the scientific and “hanging out in your friend’s cousin’s basement” senses of the word. By 1962, scientists at the University of Oklahoma had run out of ideas until one of them asked, “What if we gave an elephant a thousand doses?” The answer was probably a lot less fun than they expected, as the poor animal died a swift but grim death, but they probably expected less than they would have if they’d done it after watching Cocaine Bear.
Magnetized Cockroaches
“Can you turn a cockroach into a magnet?” is a question you only ask after you’ve been seriously scientifically jaded, but in 2017, scientists at the Nanyang Technological University did just that when they stuck some roaches into a super-strong magnetic field and measured what happened. Again, what happened was the creation of the most disgusting X-Men, though the magnetic effects wore off quickly in living roaches. The truly weird part is that the effect lasted way longer in dead roaches, but we probably don’t have to worry about that. Unless someone creates…
Zombie Dogs
Believe it or not, we do know how to bring once-living creatures back from the dead. In 1934, biologist Robert E. Cornish successfully revived two dogs by injecting them full of adrenaline and anticoagulants and then moving them really fast on a teeter-totter. Yes, really.
Of course, the dogs came back blind and mindless… kind of like a zombie. Cornish hoped to try his method on humans, specifically a recently executed prisoner, but the government forbade it not out of any fear of a zombie apocalypse but because they weren’t sure how double jeopardy laws applied to a revived corpse. Zombies can be such a legal headache.