Frog fungus the result of human pregnancy testing

I'm glad I live in more civilized times:

"We think we have traced the origin of the spread of the amphibian chytrid fungus to the 'frog' pregnancy test for women, which was widely used from the 1930s to the 1960s," said Che Weldon, a zoologist at North-West University who has been researching the phenomenon.

That test involved taking the urine of a woman and injecting it into an African clawed frog. If the woman was pregnant the hormones in her urine would stimulate ovulation in the frog and it would spawn within a matter of hours.

I think the rest of the story was about a fungus killing frogs or something. I couldn't comprehend it because my mind boggled at the concept of taking a syringeful of urine and injecting it into a frog, which would probably be urinating on you as you did so. I think we have a new contender for world's worst job: pee-injector.

Correction...assistant pee-injector.

posted by Mrs Peel at 03:40 PM

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