When it comes to finding cures for serious diseases that affect humans, such as cancer, AIDS, polio or heart diseases, we always need carry out a lot of research. To make sure that these experiments will not do any harm to humans, we have to test them on animals first.

Animal experiments are widely used to study animal behaviors, develop new medicines and test new medical technologies, but some experiments are inhumane, and even cruel. They can cause pain to the animals involved, reduce their quality of life or threaten their lives.

There are a lot of arguments regarding whether animals should be used in medical testing. Many claim that animals too have the right to be healthy, free and to use their minds. Most animal experimenters have been aware of this ethical problem and try to find alternative ways to produce equally valid results. Even if animals have to be tested, they try to do the tests as humanely as possible. However, the following tests seem somewhat crazy and perverted, and most of them are closer to madness than genius.

 Research on the sexual inclinations of turkeys

In the 1960s, while researching the sexual behavior of turkeys, Martin Schein and Edgar Hale of Pennsylvania State University conducted a series of experiments. When a male turkey saw a lifelike model of a female turkey, it tried to mate with it. To find out what actually excited the male turkey, the scientists removed parts from the female – the tail, feet and wings – one by one – until the bird eventually lost interest. They found out that when there was only a head on a stick, the bird was still interested. Actually, it preferred the head more than a headless body.