What is the Rabbit Test?
The “rabbit test” refers to the late 1920s method of injecting a woman’s urine into a female rabbit to test for pregnancy. Within several days of doing the rabbit test, the rabbit’s ovaries will show changes if the woman is pregnant. The changes occur due to the presence of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is a hormone that occurs in the uterus when a woman’s egg is fertilized. The expression “the rabbit died” was commonly used to mean that a woman was given a rabbit test and was found to be pregnant. However, although popular, the term is incorrect as the rabbit died whether the woman was discovered to be pregnant or not. The animals had to be killed in order to examine the ovaries. The rabbit test was later revised so that ovarian changes could be checked for on live, rather than dead, rabbits. Blood tests and home pregnancy urine tests replaced the rabbit test. Both of these methods also test hCG in the body, but do not use rabbits at all. In contrast to the other methods,
