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Interesting, I too heard of mouth pipetting via an antidote about a modern day bovine sperm collection facility.

I was surprised that anyone still did it given the availability of the micropipett.

Also, I wonder why the scientists of the past didn't obtain the liquid samples by simply sticking their thumb over one end of a straw dipped in the liquid.

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The pipettes I worked with in school 30 years ago were effectively glass straws with a mark for the designated volume. One dipped it in the solution over the mark, used the thumb to seal it, and then carefully let tiny amounts of air in to drop the bottom of the miniscus down to the line.

It was terrible and nothing ever worked and my thumbs hurt.

> sticking their thumb over one end of a straw dipped in the liquid

Brings back memories of learning how to do that with my siblings. Every chance we got, we would scrunch up straw wrappers and then use the method to animate the wrapper with liquid.

Not certain if I should show my kids how to do that.

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