What Two Princeton Scientists Learned By Turning A Living Cat Into A Phone

May 2024 · 1 minute read

Ernest Wever and his assistant Charles Bray started the experiment by — brace yourself — surgically opening the skull of a sedated cat and attaching a telephone wire to its cranial auditory nerve. The cable stretched an entire 50 feet and was fastened to a telephone receiver in a soundproof room away from the sleeping feline. The scene almost looked like a sick parody of science. While Bray spoke into the cat's ear at different volumes, Wever would listen closely through the receiver and record his observations as the sounds were transmitted at different frequencies (per Mudd Manuscript Library Blog). 

The two researchers needed to utilize a real-life auditory nerve in order to accurately derive whatever findings would arise from the experiment. While it's certainly a barbaric and grisly thing to picture, it was far more humane (not to mention legal) to perform the exercise on an animal than on a human being. Animal rights activists might disagree, but all the same, they exhumed some interesting discoveries through their unusual tactics, as All That's Interesting points out. 

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