Menagerie at N.I.H.

The toadfish, with its huge head, small body and slimy skin, may well rank as the ugliest creature in animaldom. Sailors hate the toadfish because it croaks so loudly that it confuses sonar signals; fishermen despise it because it is as inedible as the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder. Piled up on beaches from Cape Cod to Florida, it smells like rotten whale. Yet even mudcolored toadfish can be heroes.

Last week at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., cancer researchers intently observed 60 toadfish injected with an experimental anticancer drug, methyl GAG (for glyoxal-bis-gua-nylhydrazone). The researchers were trying to find out why the drug produces an undesirable side effect--lowered blood sugar. The toadfish is an ideal subject for such an experiment because it has simple kidney and insulin-producing mechanisms that permit researchers to observe sugar changes. To obtain blood samples, the researchers prick each toadfish's tail. To collect urine, they attach balloons to the excretory ducts of the toadfish, let them swim around for several days in a briny tank, take the urine-filled balloons to the laboratories for study.

Cooperative Clams. Toadfish are only one of countless species of animals taking part in medical experiments on N.I.H.'s 818 acres in Bethesda and Poolesville.

Goats undergo the surgeon's knife for nerve-grafting experiments. Pigtailed macaques, squirrel monkeys, marmosets and rhesus monkeys figure in cancer and behavioral studies. Horses and sheep provide blood for scientists anxious to study rabies and staphylococcal infections. Rice rats, Mongolian gerbils and Egyptian spiny mice are used in nutrition studies; some mice are inbred for as many as 99 generations so that researchers can study the mechanisms involved in tissue transplants. Venus clams by the dozen sacrifice their hearts to the study of the chemistry of the nervous and muscular systems.

Because snails are carriers of the blood fluke that causes schistosomiasis, a disease on the rampage in Egypt, parasitologists are growing 20 varieties of snails in order to test 3,000 chemicals that might kill the fluke. Tropical virologists grow many kinds of mosquitoes to bite size, to study what subspecies can transmit such diseases as yellow fever and eastern equine encephalitis, a form of sleeping sickness that periodically reaches epidemic strength in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Louisiana. "Problems--nothing but problems," says Dr. G. Robert Coatney. "In nature mosquitoes grow without any trouble, but when we try to raise them, they get sick just like people."

Unique Anatomies. Other animals in the N.I.H. menagerie are prized for their unique anatomies. The primitive mammalian ear of the possum is used for hearing experiments. The simple retina of the squid proves to be an aid in eye research. Chinchillas, described as "castoffs not suitable for fur coats," have middle-ear cavities larger and more accessible than those of other mammals. Physiologists are able to explore the neural pathways involved in hearing.

This year N.I.H. will spend $58,500,000 on medical research. How it pays off will mostly depend on human scientists, under Director James Shannon, but they in turn will be relying heavily on the 10,000 members of the institutes' piscatorial, molluscan, reptilian, arthropodal and lower mammalian staff.

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