Since the beginning of the 20th century, there was a huge eager to discover the space. However it was not safe enough for human beings to travel into space. So, scientists have decided to send animals first instead of humans to see how their biological system is going to react and test the durability of spacecrafts.
Among all the different kinds of animals, scientists mainly used dogs, monkeys and mice. Yet, there were other animals that were sent to space as well. This actually means that animals have played very important role in discovering space. The following article has a list of 5 animals who have launched into space.
1 Fruit flies
Back on the 20th of February 1947, the first animal was sent to space, and it was a group of fruit flies. The fruit flies were put aboard a US V2-rocket which was launched from New Mexico. The reason behind this experiment was to test the effect of radiation exposures at high attitude. What really exciting about this, is that the fruit flies have survived the flight and they were found alive.