Forget
woolly mammoths. The business of copying cats is quietly making headway.
First, scientists reprogrammed eggs from everyday house cats to contain
instructions for building wild ones. Then they started churning out
small endangered cats. Next up: Lions and Canadian lynx.
On the surface, the idea is simple: Animal numbers dwindling? Let’s just use science to make copies of the ones that remain. But it will not be nearly as easy as it sounds. That much has been apparent since the birth of the very first endangered-species clone: a little gaur named Noah, an exact copy of a rare wild ox native to India and Southeast Asia. His birth in January 2001 was a headline-grabbing feat, proving that it was at least technically possible to mimeograph endangered animals. It was also a bittersweet accomplishment. Thirty-six hours after he was born, Noah began showing signs of a gastrointestinal infection. Twelve hours later, he was dead. The researchers at Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts company that brought Noah into being, said cloning had nothing to do with the calf’s tragic fate, but it’s impossible to say for sure, given the health problems that have been documented in other clones. Noah’s death suggested that wildlife replication would not be immune to the challenges and complications that have plagued those cloning pets and livestock. But if we can get it right, cloning has the potential to be a useful, if limited, tool in conservation. When it comes to endangered species, Stewart Brand’s words from his 1968 Whole Earth Catalog still resonate: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”
Read the rest of this fascinating story here: Ditto
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