Less than a century ago, one of the most widely used pregnancy tests was using… frogs.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, thousands of African clawed frogs were shipped to laboratories around the world for use in pregnancy tests.
The test process sounds a bit odd, but it gives quite the right result. When you suspect you’re pregnant, you’ll send a urine sample to a lab. Scientists will inject urine into the hind legs of a female African clawed frog and release it back into the tank. Within 24 hours after injection, if the frog lays eggs, the woman is pregnant. The reason is that the pregnancy hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), present in human urine causes ovulation in frogs.
In addition to this method is reusable, a Xenopus frog can live up to 10 years in captivity so it has quickly become a new generation of pregnancy testing tools.
From the late 1930s to the 1960s, thousands of Xenopus laevis frogs were immersed in an infinite cycle of ovulation to devote themselves to the problem of human family planning. But over time, a more advanced method of chemical detection of hCG was born and saved the frog.
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