Sounds of Science?
July 30, 2021
On a presumably rainy, grey afternoon, they walked out onto a damp, soggy field. Feet squelching, stuck in mud. They entered a barn, let’s say, near that field. Inside, they chose, based on the “guidelines for the care and use of animals of the University of Florida,” the five “healthy, non-pregnant, grade Western ewes” from their flock. They looked them up and down. Maybe weighed them. The ewes were without food for 24 hours, anesthetized with halothane 2%, a drug administered hidden within oxygen, and used often for caesurean sections (despite not being recommended) – and then they were “killed with intravenous potassium chloride.” Potassium chloride is a drug used for lethal injections in the United States. It induces cardiac arrests. It sets fire to one’s veins all the way to the heart. Lights one on fire from the inside. They continued though. They shaved a segment of the abdomins of the ewes, and “the stomachs and intestines were delivered through a 20 cm incision in the upper right flank” as if they were babies and “flushed with water to remove pockets of gases and other products of digestion containing methane-producing organisms and replaced in the abdominal cavity.” Once everything was back in place, the ewes were then stitched back up. This is the preparation of ewes for a scientific experiment: to see whether or not low frequency sounds, or sounds of a vibroacoustic origin, have an impact on the foetus of pregnant women through an animal model, sheep.