24 Eyebrow-Arching Scientific Experiments That Were Actually Carried Out
Teaching your kid Klingon as an ‘experiment’ is a whole other level of nerdom
![24 Eyebrow-Arching Scientific Experiments That Were Actually Carried Out](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/8/799458_320x180.jpg)
In 2020, a group of biologists succeeded in sequencing the genetic material of the illusive giant squid. Our fingers are crossed, but they’re now going to compare the giant squid’s DNA to that of its much smaller relatives, which will hopefully reveal information about its lifecycle, what and how it is so large in comparison to other crustacean and how it has adjusted to its dark, deep habitat.
Considering that the mysterious squid was only caught on camera three times in the last 14 years, that’s a piece of wealthy information. As are the other discoveries below…
Dinosaur Chickens
![CRACKED COM Scientists created chickens with dinosaur faces. con In 2015, researchers from Yale and Harvard. possibly with funding from John Hammond, fiddled with the chicken genome until they created chicks with velociraptor snouts instead beaks. expert of When faced with ethical concerns of the abomination before God variety, the lead author of the study assured everyone that none of the fetuses were allowed to hatch. But he then added that if allig they had, they would have survived and done just fine.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/3/799433.jpg)
Babies and Diapers
![CRACKED.COM Do wet diapers wake up babies? That's what a 2007 experiment set to find out. Scientists gathered 34 sleeping infants and, using a syringe, injected their diapers with warm water. The results? The babies slept through the procedure unfazed. So, parents can relax and wait for babies to wake up before changing diapers.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/7/799457.jpg)
Eye Color Segregation
![After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., 3rd grade teacher Jane Elliott taught her class about racism by turning them racist. She segregated her all-white class based on eye color and gave privileges to the brown-eyed kids. They started engaging in discriminatory behavior, and outperforming their blue-eyed CRACL peers socially and academically. She reversed the roles the next day, only to get similar results.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/6/799456.jpg)
Transparent Mice
![Scientists turned mice and organs) transparent. This mouse might look like an exotic street delicacy, but it's heralding a revolutionary medical technology: 3D-printed organs for transplants. German researchers have developed a technique to remove pigment and fat from organic tissues like those in mice- and more importantly, humans. The resulting transparent organs can provide blueprints for a stem-cell-loaded biological 3D printer. And perhaps it can also be infused with flavors like BBQ and ranch. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/5/799455.jpg)
Teaching Klingon
![d'Armond Speers wanted to know how children understand languages, SO he taught his son STAR TREK LANGUAGE KLINGON for the first three years of his life. The experiment failed when his son refused to speak in Klingon years later. d'Armond Speers CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/3/799453.jpg)
Sleep Paralysis
![SLEEP PARAL SIS FREEZES YOU AS NIGHMARES TAKE OVER. RESEARCHERS ARE STUDYING IT .. BY INDUCING IT. As one study's notes stated: She... was suddenly attacked by paralysis. She felt much stronger fear than ever before. She tired to fight the paralysis by turning over in bed. However, despite an attempt at turning, her paralysis did not cease. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/4/799454.jpg)
Babies Like Good Puppets
![A study conducted by scientists from Yale University indicates that babies under 24 months have a sense of morality. When shown puppets who did something good or bad, and then given a choice between the two, babies chose the good puppet over 80% of the time. EVIL CRACKED](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/2/799452.jpg)
Robot Ghosts
![SCIENTISTS HAVE BUILT ROBOT SHOCK GHOSTS. Tactile feedback Master robot Slave robot ELECTRODES TELL SUBJECTS SPECTRAL WRAITHS ARE NEAR. As Professor Olaf Blanke puts it, Our experiment induced the sensation of a foreign presence in the laboratory for the first time. It shows that it can arise under normal conditions, simply through conflicting sensory-motor signals. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/1/799451.jpg)
Ancient Worms
![Scientists resurrected a nearly 42,000- year-old worm. Russian and Princeton University scientists say they've thawed and revived two ancient nematodes from the Pleistocene Epoch that were recovered from the Siberian permafrost. The younger is a mere 32,000 years old, while the elder is 41,700 (but honestly doesn't look a day over 40,000). We cannot confirm whether the team is now missing one worm and one husky. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/5/0/799450.jpg)
Nerdy Bullfighter
![24 Eyebrow-Arching Scientific Experiments That Were Actually Carried Out](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/8/799448.gif)
Racist Babies
![R A C I S T The verdict is in: Babies are racist. Researchers from Ontario Institute for Studies in Education had adults of various races show babies where to look. The babies took better instruction from people of the same race as them. They also played happy and sad music, and found that babies associated happy music with people of the same race, and sad music with people of different races. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/9/799449.jpg)
Guilt
![A group of psychologists managed to guilt-trip children into good behavior. They gave the children toys that were rigged to break the moment they touched them, and then proceeded to stare at them for a full minute, recording the children's reaction. Five years later, it was found that children who expressed more guilt developed less behavioral problems. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/5/799445.jpg)
Staring At Monsters
![SUBJECTS LOOKED IN A MIRROR TILL MONSTERS APPEARED. IMAGINARY MONSTERS. IT TOOK LESS THAN A MINUTE. In a follow-up, healthy young individuals stared at each other, in low-light. Once started seeing monsters. Our neurons go a little stir-crazy when forced to look at the same thing for long. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/2/799442.jpg)
Kick Out The Jams
![Dr. Carolyn Rovee-Collier was one of the first psychologists to test the memory function in infants. While looking for a way to entertain her own baby while she studied, Rovee-Collier tied a ribbon from her baby's foot to his musical mobile in his crib. She discovered that he could remember1 that when he kicked his foot, the mobile would make music. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/8/799438.jpg)
Unethical Plutonium
![THE MANHATTAN PROJECT CONTINUED POST-HIROSHIMA. DOCTORS INJECTED UNWITTING PATIENTS WITH PLUTONIUM. They also pulled 15 teeth from the first injectee, for research. At no point did anyone inform him why. Finally, he figured out he was a test subject and fled the hospital at night, somehow going on to live for eight more years until his heart failed in 1953. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/3/799443.jpg)
Power Rangers
![In the 1990s, researchers monitored two groups of elementary school children while they played indoors. One group had been shown an episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the other had not. The children who'd watched Power Rangers were six times more aggressive! CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/7/799447.jpg)
Observing Kids
![CRACKED.COM Researchers put kids in a room, said an invisible woman named Princess Alice was going to watch them play a game, and then they left. The kids didn't know they were being recorded. The kids who said they believed in Princess Alice didn't cheat, while 5 of 7 of the non-believers did... Researchers compared this to adult morality and religious beliefs.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/4/4/799444.jpg)
Chimp + Human = Unsuccessful
![A Soviet biologist tried to create IIya a humanzee. Ivanov What do you get when you cross a human with a chimpanzee? The answer is obviously an abomination but Soviet biologist llya Ivanov decided to proceed with such an experiment anyway. Some claim one specimen was successfully created, but no confirmation exists. Surely somewhere Charlton Heston is bellowing at the hubris of man. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/9/799439.jpg)
Gibbon Voices
![JAPANESE SCIENTISTS GAVE A GIBBON A BUNCH OF HELIUM. SURE ENOUGH, THE GIBBON'S VOICE TURNED SQUEAKY. The team wanted to find how gibbons make their noises. It appears that gibbons consciously control their vocal system, much like humans do, except that they specialize in singing rather than speech. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/6/799436.jpg)
6 Elaborate Science Experiments Done Just for the Heck of It
Subliminal Nailbiting
![MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BITTER. MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BITNER MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BIRNER MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BITTER MY FINGERNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BIRTHER MY BNAILS TASTE TERRIBLY BITNER MY NAILS TASTE 1EERRIBLY BITTHER NAILS TASTE NEBBIBLY BIRNER BITNER In 1942, a group of young, nail-biting children heard this creepy phrase repeated hundreds of times while they slept, every night for two months. It was a study on the effects of subliminal suggestion to help break habits. After the experiment, 8 of the 20 boys MY stopped biting their nails. BITTHER CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/7/799437.jpg)
Creepy Teachers
![1950's researchers Jones and Bayley examined whether early or late onset puberty was more socially advantageous. Hot Sample Not This mostly involved studying a bunch of teenage boys for six years, but for some reason, included having adult teachers rate their teenage students on how attractive they were. GRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/5/799435.jpg)
Money Seems To Turn Kids Selfish
![In 2012, an experiment revealed that children tend to become selfish and unhelpful when they are reminded about money. 0d Two groups of children were subjected to a series of games. Children who went through the money activation process appeared to be more selfish during the games and less helpful to the experimenter than those who didn't, despite their lack of economic knowledge about money. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/0/799430.jpg)
Spraying Germs
![COULD FOES BIOLOGICALLY ATTACK THE U.S. COAST? TO FIND OUT, WE SPRAYED GERMS OVER SAN FRANCISCO. Within days, people mysterious, hard-to-treat by the rare bacteria- -trickled into the area's hospitals. Weird infections have sporadically cropped up in the Bay Area ever since. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/1/799431.jpg)
Before Babies See, They Smell
![THE SMELLIER, THE BETTER Before they can see her face, a newborn is guided to their mother's breast by smell. BUT JUST HOW DO WE KNOW? Scientists dangled moms' breast pads about 4 inches in front of their babies' noses; one clean, and one unwashed. The majority of the babies preferred the unwashed pads. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/3/4/799434.jpg)