Rat Experiments Show Noise-fertility Link

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31088, 17 June 1966, Page 2

Rat Experiments Show Noise-fertility Link

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) TEL AVIV (Israel). Experiments conducted by Professor Bernhard Zondek, one of the world’s leading gynaecologists, indicate that a sound of ringing bells has a curious effect on the fertility of rats and rabbits.

One day this may lead to talk of the alarm bell as a substitute for the contraceptive pill. Meanwhile, there is merely the unexpected laboratory discovery—that when rats and rabbits are exposed to a bell ringing for one minute at 10-minute intervals, day and night for nine days, their fertility rate drops to 10 to 20 per cent The German-born professor, now 74, has been conducting his experiments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with Dr. Isachar Tamari. Observation of the animal has shown that the belt does not affect the potency of the male, who remains as attractive as ever to the female. She does not reject his advances because the alarm bell is ringing. But their union does not result in offspring. Control experiments showed that, in similar conditions, but when not subjected to the tiresome ringing of a bell, the rats and rabbits maintained a fertility rate of 70 to 90 per cent.

The scientists at the Hebrew University have advanced no theory to explain these facts, although they have ascertained that the bel* ringing causes no anatomical changes in either the male or the female. They believe that the sound of the bell exerts a specific damaging effect on the capacity of the spermatozoon to fertilise the female egg, and on the capacity of the egg to be fertilised by the spermatozoon. Whether the near-sterility effect of the ringing bells is

permanent has also been determined by the scientists. Rats which have been reduced to infertility in this manner recovered their normal reproductive powers after a 12-day respite from the noise. Further experiments have shown that if the bell ringing was started after female rats were pregnant,

the noise created a disturbance in the course of the pregnancy. In experiments with rats seven or eight days after mating, the bell was rung for 48 hours. This caused the pregnancy rate to drop from 70 to 80 per cent to 5 to 20 per cent. The uterus of the rats appeared as if pregnancy had not occurred. The study of sound waves as a means of birth control may be in its infancy, but it has already been established by these experiments that the auditory sense comes into play. Deaf rats are impervious to the bells.