The rabbit died!

As a child, I remember learning that a rabbit could be used as an early version of a pregnancy test.

Today I learned that not everyone knew this.

And then i thought to myself, that's ridiculous! People never did that, it's not possible! It's right up there with Santa Claus and Social Security in terms of childhood fictions.

Snopes to the rescue!

Turns out that in the 1920's, when we discovered that women have hormones, we injected them into female rabbits. If the rabbit's ovaries became enlarged, the woman was pregnant. Of course, to find that out, the rabbit had to be killed and its ovaries removed. In that sense, the 'rabbit always died'.