Animal testing is always controversial, and public pressure has led to a focused effort over the last few decades to move away from such forms of cruelty.
However, this was not the case in the past when animals were used for a wide variety of medical experiments along with testing the safety of cosmetics or other consumable products.
With this said, a story has surfaced from time-to-time over the years that bears were used to test the ejection seats that military pilots would depend on to escape crashing high-performance aircraft.
Is this true?
VERDICT:
TRUE
Yes, it sounds crazy but bears were once sedated and blasted out of aircraft on rocket-propelled ejection seats to test if they'd work as designed.
A spotlight was shone on this in a February 2024 CBS article featuring an exhibition in Colorado created thanks to a partnership between Aurora History Museum, Stanley Marketplace and the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum.
In speaking about the "Building on Stanley's Foundation" exhibit, Marketplace general manager Ally Fredeen touched on the use of bears to test these escape systems.
"Bears were used in the testing process for the jet ejection seats," she said while adding that no bears were ever injured during the tests.
Indeed, it is mentioned in the article that these bears were sedated and wired up to an assortment of instruments to measure their vitals during these tests.
However, it has been documented that one bear named "Yogi" was not so lucky, being killed and dissected following his supersonic ejection on March 21, 1962.
As was written by journalist David Cenciotti in the military aviation blog The Aviationist, the two-year-old brown bear was ejected from a B-58 Hustler bomber flying at a speed of 1,400kph at an altitude of 35,000 feet (10668m).
"Yogi survived the test and landed unharmed 7 minutes, 49 seconds later. Even though the bear was not killed in the test, Yogi was later euthanized, so that doctors could examine internal organs for signs of damage," writes Cenciotti.
He then points out that although the US Air Force says that Yogi was the first ejection of a living being at supersonic speeds, it is in fact not the first as North American Aviation test pilot George F. Smith beat Yogi to it in 1955.
Smith was forced to eject from a F-100 Super Sabre off California due to a flight control failure and wound up spending five days in a coma before recovering from the injuries he had sustained bailing out.
Thankfully the tests moved quickly on to voluntary humans, which is a good thing because while safety may be one of the bear necessities in life, it should not be at the cost of bear lives.
SOURCES:
https://www.cbsnews.com/
https://theaviationist.com/
