The World - News from Aug. 20, 1985

The Soviet Union claimed a first for its space program--the birth, on Earth, of healthy baby rats whose mothers spent a week in space while pregnant. The official news agency Tass announced the birth in a review of the “Noah’s Ark” flight last month that carried two monkeys, 10 rats, 10 tritons (a type of marine mollusk), 1,500 flies and a number of fish. Tass said the rats that went into space later bore “healthy, strong offspring, although a large part of the gestation time was spent in the unusual state of weightlessness.”