Recently a male birth control injection was revealed to be 99 percent effective in tests. Will any guys reliably take it? Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty amazing the freaky substances people have experimented with to avoid procreating over the years.

Dried beaver testicle

Beaver testicles and castoreum (a bitter-tasting substance secreted from glands next to the anus) were traditionally used for medicine. This sort of makes sense as it contains salicylic acid, which is the active ingredient in aspirin (sourced from willow, which beavers gnaw). However, Roman women who inhaled the fumes from burning beaver balls to try and induce abortions probably didn't have a great success rate, although Canadians were still reported to be using similar methods until the 1800s. Nowadays it's commonly used in perfume, and by Phillip Morris who use the stuff to flavour cigarettes.

A medieval beaver resigns himself to castration

Crocodile shit and cedar oil

The oldest written reference to contraception is in an Egyptian Kahun Papyrus from 1850 BC. It was noted that women were encouraged to use honey and crocodile dung to create a spermicidal foam, which would then be inserted into the vagina. The idea of creating a sperm unfriendly environment is sound, but the ingredients are ineffective. Aristotle suggested cedar oil, which may help by slowing sperm movement.

Pennyroyal

You've probably heard of this one, since Kurt Cobain sang about hippie abortifacient on the In Utero track, Pennyroyal Tea. The herb has been mentioned as long ago as the fourth century BC by Aristophanes in his plays Lysistrata and Peace. It contains a mild poison (pulegone) and has been prescribed for fainting, flatulence, gall ailments, gout and hepatitis, but is now more commonly used to settle the stomach.

Pennyroyal Tea, Nirvana

Bamboo

Women in China and Japan used bamboo tissue paper discs as barriers to the cervix. The forefather of the modern diaphragm contraceptive device probably had some success in keeping Chinese birth rates down. It was also a belief, however, that women who were totally passive during sex wouldn't get pregnant. Bit less scientific.

Lamb intestines

Condoms are nothing new - from the 1500s people were armouring up with linen sheaths, which were later replaced by sheep intestines. They were too pricey to be disposable, so would be kept with a gent's snuff box and hankerchief. Quite how someone chanced upon wearing lamb innards on their dick probably falls on the wrong side of animal husbandry. They're still available for those with latex allergies, but they don't prevent STIs.

Dating back to 1640, the world's oldest condom (made from pigskin) was found in Lund, Sweden, with its original Latin users manual