People can get very creative when it comes to finding new places to have sex – but one couple may just win the prize for discovering the most unusual location to get it on.
Ida Sabelis and her boyfriend Jupp had sexual intercourse in an MRI machine in the name of science back in 1991.
While their lovemaking session happened over 30 years ago, it’s recently captured attention again after the remarkable images were shared online, leaving many in awe at the “wild” measures they took to get the snaps.
Ida and Jupp got physical inside an MRI machine after their friend, Dutch scientist Menko Victor ‘Pek’ van Andel, set out to uncover what happens inside our bodies when we have sex.
The images generated were the first of their kind and became the centre point of a hugely popular British Medical Journal entry in 1999 when a more detailed study was conducted that is still read by thousands of people every month.
Now interest has piqued again as a result of the story going viral on TikTok where it was recapped based off an 2019 article from Vice.
Ida told the publication she decided to take part in the unusual scientific study “as a favour” to Pek, who was her best friend’s partner at the time.
She was also a big campaigner of women’s rights and keen to help broaden the understanding of female bodies in the medical industry.
Initially she and Jupp were supposed to have sex inside the machine in the standard missionary position, but Ida had other ideas.
“It’s a position that for me produces hardly any arousal,” she said.
“Anyway, Jupp would have been too heavy in that tiny tube.”
So they wriggled around into a spooning position for the experiment, with Ida – a professor of organisational anthropology at Amsterdam’s Vrije University – explaining there were plenty of giggles throughout the process.
One of the most remarkable findings from the experiment was determining that a woman’s vagina wasn’t simply a straight tunnel.
It had been a long-running belief that a man’s penis went in straight and came straight out, with early depictions including the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing from the 1492 showing the vagina as a straight cylinder.
But the MRI showed “the penis has the shape of a boomerang”, meaning it bends inside to the shape of the woman’s body, without any pain to the man during his erection.
The discovery was huge, leading to a formal study conducted between 1991 and 1999 by Ida and Pek, the results of which were published in the BMJ.
These subsequent experiments were all done in the missionary position, using volunteers above the age of 18 who could quit at any moment.
No one did, but Ida pointed out no one other than her and Jupp were able to complete the test without using Viagra.
“It became pleasantly warm in the tube and we truly succeeded in enjoying each other in a familiar way,” she told Vice.
“When I saw them [the images] it was just like, ‘aww that’s how we fit together’.”
Despite the fact it was published on December 24 1999, the paper was one of the medical journal’s “most popular articles of all time” and was even honoured by BMJ on its 20th anniversary in 2019.
Despite the fact the initial experiment occurred over 30 years ago, the photos are still incredibly powerful, with TikTok users still curious about one particular detail.
“OK but like how is there space,” one asked.
“I’ve been in an MRI machine 4 times. Do you guys know how loud it is?” another remarked.
As one said: “How the hell did 2 people fit in an MRI machine? I’ve found that they’re really narrow tunnels and very restrictive.”
Others branded the story “insane” and declared they were “so glad” they’d seen this TikTok.
“I genuinely don’t know how I feel about this information, but. thank you?” one teased.
“This is honestly wild,” another agreed.