 You may be surprised to learn that there have been far more animals sent up into space than there have been humans. Most of us know the Soviet Union sent a dog up in the 1950s but there has actually been hundreds of different species of animals sent up into space starting as far back as the 1940s and even into the present day. Animal rights organizations have criticized these experiments but science and world governments are adamant it is essential for humanity's efforts in space exploration. In this video we will go through the history of animals in space and the purpose of these tests involved. Wait until you hear this. So sending animals into space originally only served to test the survivability of space flight before manned space missions were attempted. But later animals were flown to investigate various biological processes and the effects of microgravity and space flight might have on them. To date, seven national space programs have flown animals into space. The Soviet Union, the United States, France, Argentina, China, Japan, and Iran. Animals have been used in aeronautic exploration since 1783 when the Mongolia brothers sent a sheep, a duck, and a rooster aloft in a hot air balloon. The duck serving as the experimental control. Back in the day after World War II, the limited supply of captured German V-2 rockets led to the US use of high altitude balloon launches carrying fruit flies, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, frogs, goldfish, and monkeys to heights of up to 144,000 feet. These high altitude balloon flights from 1947 to 1960 tested radiation exposure, psychological response, life support, and recovery systems. So starting in the 1940s, the first animals sent into space were fruit flies aboard a US launched V-2 rocket on 20 February 1947 from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. The purpose of the experiment was to explore the effects of radiation exposure at high altitudes. The rocket reached 68 miles in 3 minutes and 10 seconds, past both the US Air Force 50 mile and the international 100 kilometer definition of the boundary of space. The blossom capsule was ejected and successfully deployed its parachute, the fruit flies were recovered alive. To the 1950s again it was the US launched a mouse into space aboard a V-2 but the rocket disintegrated because the parachute system failed. This was followed by the Soviet Union who launched the R-1 3A1 flight carrying the dogs Sagan and Desik into space but not into orbit. These two dogs were the first living higher organisms successfully recovered from a space flight. Both space dogs survived the flight although one would die on a subsequent flight. Then everything went quiet for a while until 1957 when on the 3rd of November the second ever orbiting spacecraft carried the first animal into orbit, the dog Lyka, launched aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Lyka died during the flight as was intended because the technology to return from orbit had not yet been developed. At least 10 other dogs were launched into orbit and numerous other on suborbital flights before the historic date of 12 April 1961 when Yuri Gargarin became the first human in space. On 13 December 1958 a Jupiter IRBM-AM-13 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida with the United States Navy trained South American squirrel monkey named Gordo on board. The nose cone recovery parachute failed to operate and Gordo was lost. Telemetry data sent back during the flight showed that the monkey survived the 10G of launch, 8 minutes of weightlessness and 40G of reentry at 10,000 miles per hour. The nose cone sank 1300 into nautical miles downrange from Cape Canaveral and was not recovered. Monkeys Abel and Baker became the first monkeys to survive space flight after the 1959 flight. On 28 May 1959 aboard Jupiter IRBM-AM-18 were a 7 pound American born Rhesus monkey Abel and an 11 ounce squirrel monkey from Peru, Baker. The monkeys rode in the nose cone of the missile to an altitude of 360 miles and a distance of 1700 miles down the Atlantic missile range from Cape Canaveral, Florida. They were stood forces 38 times the normal pull of gravity and were weightless for about 9 minutes. A top speed of 10,000 miles per hour was reached during their 16 minute flight. The monkeys survived the flight in good condition. Abel died 4 days after the flight from a reaction to anesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode. Baker was the center of media attention for the next several months as she was watched closely for any ill effects from her space flight. She was even mated in an attempt to test her reproductive system. Baker lived until November 1984 at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. On July 1959 a launch of a Soviet R2 rocket which reached 132 miles carried two space dogs and Marfusa the first rabbit to go into space. A September 1959 launch Jupiter AM 23 carried two frogs along with 12 mice but the rocket was destroyed during launch. These were the crazy days of the space race guys, can you imagine the tension that was building up? During the early 60s the Soviet Union launched an incredible amount of animals including the dogs Belka and Strolka along with a grey rabbit, 40 mice, two rats and 15 flasks of fruit flies and plants onboard the Sputnik 5. It was the first spacecraft to carry animals into orbit and return them alive. Incredibly one of Strolka's pups Pushinka, bred and born after her mission, was given as a present to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khrushchev in 1961 and many descendants are known to exist, you can be the judge of that one guys, believe it or not back in the days of the great space race the French were in on the action. France flew their first rat into space on 22nd February 1961. Two more rats were flown in October 1962 and on 18 October 1963 France launched Fichette, the cat aboard Veronica AGI sounding rocket number 47. The launch was directed by the French center CERMA, Fichette was recovered alive after a 15 minute flight and a descent by parachute. Fichette had electrodes implanted into her brain and the recorded neural impulses were transmitted back to earth. A second cat was sent to space by CERMA on 24 October 1963. There was a delay in recovery of the capsule and this cat was found dead when finally recovered. The final French animal launches were of two monkeys in March 1967. When China were at it launching mice and rats in 1964 and 1965 and two dogs in 1966. There were dozens more launches by the US and the Soviets during the 60s 70s 80s including on board the Apollo mission but we'll skip ahead a few decades to the 1990s where Japan launched its first animals a species of newt into space on 18 March 1995 aboard the space flyer unit. The last flight of Columbia in 2003 carried silkworms, garden orb spiders, carpenter bees, harvester ants and Japanese killfish. Incredibly nematodes from one experiment were found still alive in the debris after the space shuttle Columbia disaster. In September 2007 during the European Space Agency's FALTAWN M3 mission, charter grades also known as water bears were able to survive 10 days of exposure to open space with only their natural protection. On the same mission, Nadezhda a common Russian cockroach was sent into space inside a sealed container and became the first earth creature to give birth outside the earth giving birth to 33 young on board. In March 2009 during the countdown of the STS-119 a free-tailed bat was seen clinging to the fuel tank. NASA observers believe the bat would fly off once the shuttle started to launch, but it did not. Upon analyzing the images a wildlife expert who provided support to the center said it likely had a broken left wing and some problems with its right shoulder or wrist. The animal most likely perished quickly during discovery's climb into orbit. On the 31st anniversary of its revolution in 2010, Iran became the latest country to launch animals into space. The animals, a mouse, two turtles and some worms were launched on top of the Kavish Ghar three rocket and returned alive to earth. And we will leave it there for now guys of course these are but a few notable selections and there were a dozen more launches. We hope you enjoyed this video and found it a little bit different. Thanks for watching and remember the ways by which we arrive at knowledge are hardly less wonderful than the discovery of these things themselves.