There's an old joke or anecdote about a pregnancy test and "you wait for the rabbit to die." Is there any historical basis for that?
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Yes, there is a historical basis for the "rabbit test" joke, and it refers to an early method of pregnancy detection.
In the 1920s and 1930s, before the development of over-the-counter pregnancy tests, one of the methods used to detect pregnancy involved the injection of a woman's urine into a female rabbit. The test was based on the observation that certain hormones present in the urine of pregnant women would cause the ovaries of the rabbit to show distinct changes.
Here's how the test worked:
- A sample of the woman's urine was injected into a female rabbit.
- After a few days, the rabbit was dissected to examine its ovaries.
- If the woman was pregnant, the rabbit's ovaries would show changes characteristic of the effect of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is present in the urine of pregnant women.
It's important to note that the rabbit would die regardless of the outcome; it needed to be dissected to examine the ovaries. However, a common misconception was that the rabbit would only die if the woman was pregnant, leading to the phrase, "the rabbit died."
Over time, advancements in science and technology led to the development of modern pregnancy tests that are much simpler, quicker, and don't involve harm to animals
