What is the origin of the phrase "the rabbit died"?

Answer 1

I think because they used rabbits to determine if a woman was pregnant. I think they injected it with some solution derived from the woman,s body. If she was pregnant, the rabbit would die. I'm not sure, but my mom told me this story once when I was little. i don't now it she was pulling my leg or if it is really a true story.

Answer 2

The phrase, "the rabbit died", refers to a pregnancy test. It is a bit of an urban falsehood. Years ago, people thought that if the urine of a woman was injected into a rabbit and the rabbit died, the woman was definitely pregnant. If the rabbit lived, the woman wasn't pregnant. That was false.

The origins of the rabbit test was with the discovery in 1920 that a woman will produce a hormone called human chorionic gonadatropin (hCG) shortly after the fertilized egg implants itself in the uterine wall. In truth, hCG is necessary to prevent the rejection of the developing embryo. In 1927 it was discovered that if you inject the urine of a pregnant woman into a rabbit, the rabbit would display these distinct ovarian changes. Now in those days, the rabbit always did die, because they had to sacrifice the rabbit in order to look at the ovarian changes. Eventually, they, luckily, refined the test so that the doctors didn't have to kill the rabbit and still be able to examine the ovarian changes.

Tests we use today still measure hCG...no rabbits are used though. A guy with a positive hCG probably isn't pregnant but rather has testicular cancer.

Answer 3

Once upon a time, HPT's did not exist. To determine if a woman was pregnant, her urine was injected into your ordinary garden-variety (female) rabbit. If the woman's urine contained hCG (pregnancy hormone), the rabbit's ovaries would react by producing little pockets of blood. (These were harmless to the rabbit.) Unfortunately, this was in the day before see-through rabbits, so the only way to see the ovaries was to kill the rabbit, cut her open, and peek inside. So, the rabbit actually died whether or not the woman was pregnant. Somewhere along the line that little detail was lost, however, and "the rabbit died" became slang for "being pregnant."

Answer 4

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is a hormone produced shortly after a fertilized egg implants in a woman's uterine wall. It was found that if you injected a female rabbit with the woman's urine (which carries some of the hormone), it would cause definite changes to the rabbit's ovaries. The thing is, in the early days of the test, the rabbit ALWAYS died, because you had to open it up the examine its ovaries to tell if any changes had occurred. Later on, they refined the test so you didn't have to kill the rabbit to examine the ovaries, but the idea that the rabbit had to die to determine pregnancy stuck with us. Obviously, they don't have to use rabbits any more -- the pregnancy tests on the market still measure levels of hCG in a woman's urine, but they do it directly.

Answer 5

They used to check for pregnancy by injecting some of the womans blood into a rabbit and if the woman was pregnant the rabbit died. Thus the expression.

Answer 6

An old way of checking for pregnancy was to inject some blood from the woman into the ovaries of a rabbit. The ovaries had to be removed, which required killing the rabbit.

It is not true that the death of the rabbit indicated pregnancy. You can read the true origins of the phrase at

http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/rabbit.htm

Answer 7

That comes from a very old way to tell if a woman is pregnant. They would inject a rabbit with the woman's urine, then wait ( I am not sure how long it took ) and if it died, she was pregnant.

Answer 8

The hormones of a pregnant human female was injected into the bloodstream of a rabbit and if the rabbit died the female was pregnant and if it lived then she was not.

Answer 9

Pregnancy tests used to involve injecting a rabbit with your urine. Legend (false) had it that if it died, you were pregnant. Actually, the test was if the rabbit showed distinct ovarian changes, you were pregnant.

The rabbit *did* die eventually, of course, because it had to be killed to examine it internally. But not as a result of the test.

Answer 10

I believe it was if you injected a rabit with the blood sample or urine sample of a pregnant woman the rabbit would die.

not sure of a date this procedure was used.