The Rabbit Died...Crazy Discovery

I had my friend Sarah over last night and she told me how her mom had brought home two rabbits when they already had three. Sitting at the table, my mom commented that at least she is bringing home live rabbits and not babies. We both looked at her in utter confusion. My mom replied by saying that her mother told her that if the rabbit died you knew you were pregnant. Since Sarah and I offered no recognition she turned to my dad and asked if he had ever heard the saying, he hadn't. Upset and thinking that my grandma had made something up, my mom turned to Google to see if a rabbit pregnancy test held any truth. To my shock it did! In 1927 (or around there) a pregnancy test was developed in which the women's urine was injected into a rabbit. So you may be thinking how the heck does that determine anything because I know that is what I was thinking. Apparently a few days after injecting the urine, the rabbit could be opened up to observe the ovaries. The presence of the hormone hCG appears as masses on the ovaries of the rabbit, showing that there is a fertilized egg aka the woman is preggo! The sad part is that all of the rabbits died because they had to be surgically opened to view the ovaries. It wasn't seen as worth it to sew the animals back up. However, "the rabbit died" became the common phrase for a positive pregnancy test. (got my info from Wikipedia)

This was my random mind blowing news of the week. I never would have guessed that animals were used in pregnancy tests. I mean who decided, ohh I am going to put some urine into a rabbit and it will tell me if this lady is pregnant or not. There really isn't a purpose to this post, I am not condoning using live animals in determining if you are pregnant, but this is something I thought should be known since it was so intriguing.