Slashdot Mirror
A Doe, a Deer, a Deer, a Deer...
Orne writes "Texas A&M University has announced it has successfully cloned its 5th species, the North American White-Tailed deer (see press release). Though the white-tailed deer is a common species, they hope they can use the knowledge to help repopulate endangered species of deer, like the Key West deer of Florida."
This is obviously a secret plot by the automobile industry. I mean, who else really thinks we actually need more of these??
It strikes me that there's a very cheap, efficient, and non-invasive to repopulate species of deer.
Let them have sex.
(When Texas A&M announced they'd cloned a cat, they said "The last thing we need is a new reproduction strategy for cats.")
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Well the whole "repopulate" argument is just another way to justify what they are doing. Helping nature repopulate itself is the next logical step for humans as we tend to think we are above nature.
Maybe if we started to realize that in nature, species die off. It happens all the time and hasn't been just recently b/c of humans. Yes, we've caused our share of destruction but has it ever been analyzed against prior species domination?
I'm sure the sabre-toothed tiger never sat back and thought "Shit, i'm killing off these wooly mammoths like crazy! I better think of a way to encourage repopulation before they're extinct!". It just thought "Hey look! It's my next meal to ensure my survival".
Actually, they do not need to find a young animal from which to clone. Dolly, the first cloned mammal, was cloned from an adult. The "cellular age" of the clone does not equal the age of the animal from which it was cloned. However, you are correct that there is still debate about whether clones age prematurely.
Also, there has already been work done on using clones to save endangered species (BBC story).
There is also a project in Australia to clone an extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger (BBC story).
There are many reasons for using cloning to save endangered species, rather than just having them mate. These include: some species are not mating fast enough to keep up, some species don't mate well in captivity, and the desire to increase genetic diversity (by cloning from a captive animal that won't breed).
The ethics of all of this may be debatable, but like it or not, the technology is going to make this a real possibility.
I think I read that the original motivation came from an interest in cloning the Seeka deer, which lives on an island off of South Carolina. This deer is strange because it has 5 stomachs, and was of interest for some medical reason.
They're just called Key Deer. You might find some as far as Key West, but not many. The vast majority of them (about 600, with the entire population at 700 or 800) are found on Big Pine Key and No Name Key.
They're very small, standing about two or two and a half feet at the shoulder and weighing maybe 80 pounds.
Yes, Florida does in fact have deer. Although endangered, if you look hard enough you will find them. They are smaller than the white-tail variety and quite endangered. Find out more here
Only if all individuals in the population were cloned from the same individual, or from a small group of individuals. Actually, something similar to this happens in the wild. Its called the founder effect, and refers to the decreased genetic diversity in a population derived from only a few "founding" members.
You are correct that this will be a problem for the already extinct species, the Tasmanian tiger, if the suceed in cloning it.
However, this is not what they are doing to save the endangered species. The idea is to clone an individual that won't breed, and then introduce the clone into the captive breeding population. This adds diversity to the gene pool, by bringing in the genes from the non-breeder. Read the original link I posted for more info on this. Of course, this strategy assumes that there wasn't some genetic reason the original animal wouldn't breed in the first place. Perhaps he was shy? Or spent too much time reading slashdot? It seems to me that its likely he was just infertile. This is the biggest weakness of the strategy, in my opinion.