Skip to content
Million Whys
What did Ham the chimpanzee's lever-pulling performance during his 1961 spaceflight reveal about his brain in weightlessness?
His reaction times were only slightly slower than on Earth, so his trained task performance stayed largely intact.
The lever task was just a reflex or muscle twitch, so it tells us nothing about thinking in space.
His brain slowed down dramatically because without gravity, blood pooled in his head and disrupted his thinking.
