# The animals that travelled to space

From the fruit flies of 1947 to Félicette the French cat, by way of Laika and Ham the chimpanzee: the animals that paved the way to space before humans. Which one touches you most?

- 188 votes · 12 items
- Jan 28, 2019 · Émilie Lévesque
- https://even.best/en/l/2615/the-animals-that-travelled-to-space

## Top 12

1. **Fruit flies (1947)** (20 · ▲23 ▼3) — The first animals in space, aboard a V-2 rocket.
2. **Albert II (1949)** (20 · ▲20 ▼0) — The first monkey in space.
3. **The first mice (1950)** (17 · ▲18 ▼1) — Sent up by the Americans, they did not survive the return.
4. **Belka and Strelka (1960)** (14 · ▲15 ▼1) — The first dogs to come back alive from orbit.
5. **Félicette (1963)** (12 · ▲12 ▼0) — The French cat, the only cat to have flown in space.
6. **Ham (1961)** (11 · ▲14 ▼3) — NASA's chimpanzee, three months before Alan Shepard.
7. **The Soviet dogs of the suborbital flights** (11 · ▲13 ▼2) — A dozen dogs launched in the 1950s.
8. **The Salyut 5 guppies (1976)** (9 · ▲13 ▼4) — The first fish in space.
9. **The Zond 5 tortoises (1968)** (8 · ▲10 ▼2) — The first animals to fly around the Moon and come back.
10. **Nadezhda the cockroach (2007)** (8 · ▲10 ▼2) — The first creature to conceive in space.
11. **Laika (1957)** (7 · ▲10 ▼3) — The first animal to orbit the Earth, aboard Sputnik 2.
12. **Arabella the spider (1973)** (7 · ▲8 ▼1) — She learned to spin her web in weightlessness aboard Skylab.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.