London, Nov 1 : Elephants on acid, sexual turn-ons for turkeys, raising dead corpses to life – these bizarre acts are actually some of the many craziest scientific experiments of all time.

Author Alex Boase who scoured research journals, books and university archives, has compiled a list of the most amusing, provocative and shocking experiments of modern science.

Boase has assembled the strange studies in a newly published book, Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments.

“I started collecting examples of bizarre experiments years ago while in graduate school studying the history of science. I confess I had no profound intellectual motive; I simply found them fascinating,” Times Online quoted Boase, as saying.

“They filled me with disbelief, astonishment, disgust and — best of all – laughter. With hindsight, perhaps there is a deeper message. These experiments are not the work of cranks. All were performed by honest, hardworking scientists who were not prepared to accept common-sense explanations of how the world works.

“Sometimes such single-mindedness leads to brilliant discoveries. At other times it can end up closer to madness. Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing in advance where the journey will lead,” he added.

Topics covered include what happens when you give an elephant LSD and how to make a turkey frisky.

Featured in this week's New Scientist magazine, the list also includes attempts to bring dead dogs back to life, test to examine facial expressions of disgust by beheading a white rat, and experiment to prove that yellow fever was not an infectious disease, by drinking infected vomit.

Top ten wackiest experiments:

1. Elephant receives massive dose of LSD to see if it provokes temporary madness.
2. Aircraft passengers told they are about to die in crash make more mistakes in written test.
3. Two-headed dogs created by Soviet surgeon, above, but die within a month.

4. Psychologist begins experiments on son to test if laughing is spontaneous when tickled.

5. A room of nail-biting boys is played a recording or spoken announcements to break the habit while they sleep.

6. To test if people can sleep through anything, volunteers have their eyes taped open and bright lights shone in their eyes.

7. People asked to smell ammonia, put hands in a bucket of frogs and watch porn.

8. Doctor rubs vomit from yellow fever patients into open wounds and drinks it.
9. Animal corpses placed on seesaw to restart circulation and bring them back to life.

10. Fake female turkey dismantled limb by limb to find minimum that a male will mate with. (ANI)