Two tortoises go round the Moon

The first living things to travel round the Moon and come home were a pair of Russian steppe tortoises, and they had lost about ten per cent of their body weight on the way.

Zond 5 looped the far side and splashed down in the Indian Ocean, three months before Apollo 8 carried people the same way. The tortoises were dissected afterwards and found to be essentially fine; the weight loss was hunger, not radiation.