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Scientists Are Tweeting About The Strangest Experiments They've Ever Done

ByEmily Petsko|
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iStock.com/espiegle | iStock.com/espiegle

Scientists are tasked with answering some of the strangest questions we never knew we had: How do wombats poop cubes? Why are all the spoons missing from our office kitchen? And what makes the word turd so funny?

These examples just scratch the surface of scientists' experiments to explain our world. In a Twitter trending thread spotted by IFL Science, researchers and scientists of all stripes have been answering the question, “What's the weirdest thing you've done for science?” Jason Rasgon, a professor of entomology and disease epidemiology at Penn State University, posed the question a few days ago and offered a personal anecdote to kick off the discussion. “For me, it was giving nicotine enemas to caterpillars when I was a postdoc,” he wrote. “I'm certain this isn't the weirdest thing compared to what y'all have done.”

He might be right about that. A long thread of one-upmanship ensued, and it turns out that scientists are doing a lot of weird stuff with animals. “Put diapers on ostriches,” writes biomechanist Jonas Rubenson. “Made resin casts of mouse vaginas,” writes behavioral ecologist Jessie Tanner. “I made a sex doll for fruit flies and painted it with pheromones,” added a Twitter user and former biologist who goes by the name of Dr. Orchid.

These escapades aren’t confined to the lab, either. “Transported 500 decomposing fox rectums in my hand luggage on a Ryanair flight,” writes parasitologist Charlie Evans. Someone else wrote that they once brought 100 live spiders on a plane—and you thought snakes were the worst of your worries.

Their responses give us a newfound respect for the professionals who immerse themselves in bizarre and sometimes gross situations for the sake of science. Here are a few other stories they shared.

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