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Japan's Unique Cow/Whale Hybrid Experiments
RemyBR writes "Controversial scientific research happens all the time, but a review conducted by scientists in Japan uncovered a list of 'bizarre' trials - including one program designed to crossbreed cows with whales.'Scientists have analyzed 43 research papers produced by Japan over 18 years, finding most were useless or esoteric. The scientific research included injecting minke whale sperm into cows eggs, and attempts to produce test-tube whale babies.'"
I really am torn on these experiments, I mean I could seriously question the motive and nature:
... oh I don't know ... hybridizing wolverines and great white sharks?
Of all the animals you had to pick from you went with cows and whales? Cows and wales? What's next? Sloths and sea sponges? You had the chance to go Island of Doctor Moreau and you tried to recreate a manatee (hello? already exists!) instead of
On the other hand, I could also defend it with other logic, just as solid:
I don't see anything wrong with it. It was all a matter of time before this happened naturally anyways. Interspecies mating happens all the time between donkeys and horses resulting in a mule or hinny. Occasionally squash and pumpkin plants cross fertilize. It's common. Really, it was only a matter of time before a heard of cattle near the ocean resulted in a particularly rowdy bull wandering into the Ross Sea or Pacific Ocean to jump the bones of a minke whale thus creating a hybrid. Who knows, maybe these would be as useful as mules are? I'm sure the poor of third world countries could use another pack animal--now for oceanic voyages!
My work here is dung.
Wow, imagine the size of a T-bone from a whale sized cow...
That's hot!
Careful What You Wish For....
Whales with teets that put mine to shame
It looked like a cow whale to me.
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TFA says Australia is going to try to end the "scientific research" loophole. These idiotic "experiments" smell of bureaucrats hiring incompetent and/or lazy "scientists" to do useless thumb twiddling just so they can say they need to keep killing whales.
Whether or not there should be a ban on killing whales is another matter altogether. Wasting time and resources in this manner to circumvent public opinion is another. I'd be pretty pissed if I were a Japanese consumer / taxpayer (depending on who pays for these useless "experiments").
Infuriate left and right
Silly Japanese. Don't they know we already have sea cows?
This guy's the limit!
Meat wouldn't be that great of an incentive considering that we can directly clone meat so that we don't need to raise any animals and there would be a greater energy efficiency for the production of meat. I don't see milk being a problem either, as a similar solution could be developed with greater ease and less time.
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It sounds funny now, but wait until the giant flying lizard starts fighting the giant flying turtle. By that point, not even the giant robot with the missiles shooting from its fingers can save Tokyo.
kill meeee... er.. moo moooo... er.. BEOoooouUUNnnnggg
God, schmod. I want my whalecow.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
So that's how your mama got so fat!
Can't you see the obvious advantages of having a large cow-whale reserve. The Japanese wanted to produce an army of cow-whales that would have a superhuman... er... supercow ability to produce milk. With an inflated milk reserve, they could crash the US market... a veritable economic Pearl Harbor. THANK GOD THE INTELLIGENCE DIDN'T FAIL THIS TIME!!
I got a catholic block.
i hope the article's author realized that female whales are called cows...
I am ok with them pursuing this line of research, as long as they don't try something truly dangerous, like a half bear, half pig. Or worse, a half man, half bear, half pig. Now that would be trouble.
...movie.
Seriously. YUCK! What gets IN to these people?
with your tea sir?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
-quantifying the mouthfeel of whale flesh on a scale of carnivorous appeal
-how to use less fossil fuels in the preparation of whale meat to abide by the kyoto protocol
-classifying whale meat's umami taste factor
-topological descriptions of various folding models in the preparation of whale meat sushi
most of the scientific papers associated with this vastly important field of scientific research have concluded some amazing scientific findings, samples of the papers' conclusions:
"om nom nom nom nom nom..."
"BURP"
"pass the sapporo, onegai shimasu"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So it's not like this is some mad scientist thing or anything. Just business. As usual.
TZ
That's the least terrible thing (short of not killing a whale and taking it's sperm) that I can imagine the Japanese doing with whale semen. Thanks internet.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
M&Ms
This being /. I obviously didn't RTFA, but does anyone know how successful these experiments were?
I haven't seen any extremely oversized cows lusting after plankton recently, so I have to imagine the scientists in question didn't actually create the terrifying cow/whale chimeras that we're all imagining, right?
I'm thinking it's the whale sperm.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Actually, if you were going to pick some creature to go with whales, it would be the hippopotamus. In the evolutionary chain that you can establish with DNA, whales got back into the water rather late. But as someone noted below, this article is about papers that come out of "scientific" whaling -- which is really just a cover for the Japanese to hunt the endangered species for cash. So I guess they went with cows, because they are pretty cheap and it's probably easier to do whatever phony-science you want (e.g., because of agriculture, getting your cow DNA sequenced is probably somthing you can just mail in.)
Beware! My knowledge of evolution and cetaceans comes only from Richard Dawkins books which I last read like three years ago (I highly recommend The Ancestor's Tale, if you've already read the classics like Selfish Gene and Extended Phenotype.)
Protect your liberties. Donate to the ACLU
Some day, the International Whaling Committee which discusses hunting and killing of whales will be about as ethically acceptable as an International Slavery Committee that discusses acceptable ways to enslave people.
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Just please God, tell me they didn't try to fertilise a laser with shark sperm.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Don't have a cow, man!
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Won't the farmers drown when they try to milk them?
rewriting history since 2109
there's no way in hell this would ever get funding. whalecow-tipping would be almost impossible.
---- You are fully entitled to my opinion.
WTF? A cow is order Artiodactyla, and a whale is order Cetacea. Their DNA would be miles apart. The only thing they have in common is that they are mammals. How did anyone ever think this could work? And a biologist at that? Again I say, WTF?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Japan uses the "research" exception to keep on hunting whales despite the whaling ban they're supposed, by treaty, to obey. The "researchers" aren't trying to make whale-cow hybrids, they're just bullshitting to fulfill a legal requirement. They could just as well try out whether whale sperm cures cancer, or see if agitating whale baleens in one's butt result in time travel. "Nope, doesn't work, but we tried! So now let's hunt s'more whales."
wow, Slashdot is waaay behind the curve lately.
This story has been discussed o death over the last week elsewhere.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Japan has been at the forefront of cat/girl technology for *tears*.
At long, long last we have whale-cows. And Hallmark greeting card stereos. And pigs that glow under UV light. And iPhones.
Well according to that one vid I seen it was eels up the wazoo.. but then again they put all sorts of things IN ..
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Sorry, couldn't help it.
...it's called a "seacow."
Ok, how long til a whale cow shows up in some tenticle porn in Japan? My estimate, 5 hours.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
But it sounds like a bunch of bull if you ask me.
Wake me up when they crossbreed sharks with frick'n lasers..
____ plex
Japanese have a long standing history of conducting nasty experiments. Unit 731 anyone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
I mean, I understand the basics -- they're trying to breed your mom and your sister -- but I dunno. They'd still need to do a lot of work to produce a viable embryo, and to what end?
I think it might be simpler to start smaller. For example: tuna and chicken, dont you think?
Mod Parent up. This seems much less weird when you think of it in these terms. They're just doing "normal" test-tube babies. Not with Bovine, but with whale+whale.
it would explain my college roommate ...
Nobody EATS IT! The whole things has become a matter of pride, they japanese can't shift the meat without subsidies. It just ain't popular. Now beef. Good beef? That will cost you a fortune.
The reason whale meat was on the diet (when it hasn't been for ages in the rest of the world) was because post-WW2 japan had a food shortage and whale meat was easily available. For all kinds of reasons Japan just ain't a beef country. But that doesn't mean the meat was popular. Before commercial whaling was banned the consumption was already plumetting.
Japanese politics are EXTREMELY controlled by special intrest groups. Far more so then even the US. Would New York keep valuable land for growing grain just a few miles outside the city center? Hell no. Drive out of tokyo were land-prices are insane and you will land right smack in the rice paddies, rice that is so expensive to grow in Japan it makes no economical sense.
The entire whaling debate is just a product of old elite japanese wanting to say NO to the world. No normal japanese person wants to eat it. It is like those people who claim they hunt seals for historic reasons while wearing synthetic clothing and dining on pizza.
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
the Ultimate culinary beast. Imagine bacon, metres long or Fillet steaks weighing as much as a grown man.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
This research will revolutionize the entire "Eat this steak in 45 minutes and it's free!" industry...
$comment =~ s/($verb)\s+($noun)/IN SOVIET RUSSIA, $2 $1s YOU!/g;
Chales? Wows!!
Maybe Al Gore was right... we should really be afraid of Manbearpig.
I would wonder about the difficulty of the former. Hippos are pretty nasty creatures. By death count, I believe they're the deadliest animal in Africa.
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I for one welcome our new Cow-whale overlords.
Cows don't lay eggs!
Any other engineers out there suddenly want to start a collaborative project with the goal to arm whales with torpedoes, or alternatively, whale borne, atmosphere-fused, time-delayed "payback devices"? I mean: we could, with a little work, start Whale-Queda; and whale deservedly, too.
The second amendment grants us the right to arm bears, why can't we extend this a just a little? If the sharks get lasers, it really is the least we could do.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Among its characterstics:
This beast comes out when it is 25 degrees below zero
It can rip your head off
It can fly as high as a bird
It can bite your face
Anyone who reads this summary (without realizing that this is just a way to keep whaling under the guise of research) and thinks "dude, that's messed-up: I wonder what other shenanigans scientsts get up to?" should go read Elephants On Acid (and other bizarre experiments). It's a seriously strange book just chock-full of "they did WHAT? Dear Lord, *WHY*?" experiments. I thought it was interesting as a book because some of the experiments, I was like "cool, I've always wondered about that" when other people (my girlfriend, brother, best friend) were all "they did WHAT??!?" and likewise, they found meaning in other experiments that I thought were completely delusional. (Yeah, I'm saying the validity of experiments is relative.) There are some really truly gruesome experiments discussed in here, though, truly Frankenstein nightmare experiments done in the USSR, so it's not for the weak of stomach. But it's a great read.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
That article, at first glance, seemed pretty nonsensical and bizarre. It's probably the worst-written news article I've ever seen, with no context, background, or apparent point. I mean, I've seen research from western nations that seems just as silly as the crossbreeding mentioned in the article. It reads as though some scientists, purely at random, decided to look at 43 whale-related research papers and found some silly things.
It seems that the scientists in question are commissioned by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who complain that this research is simply an excuse t'hunt whales and sell them at market. A press release from the IFAW:
http://www.ifaw.org/ifaw/general/default.aspx?oid=225091
Specifically, this is in response to the Japanese increasing their whaling, allegedly for science:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4118990.stm
Now, it strikes me that the IFAW is not, perhaps, the most objective group on the planet to evaluate this. The Japan Times has this to say:
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20071225i1.html
Virtually every article out there appears to be a regurgitation of various environmental group press releases, except a couple very neutral but content-free wire service articles. I see no detailed, objective review of the science.
I suspect the ICAW and other environmental orginazations would declare -any- research that kills whales "trivial", because they place a higher value on whales' lives than any possible research results. They don't give details of the research except vague five-word descriptions of those that sound ridiculous on the face. I'd much rather have details than rhetoric, personally.
Japan's government isn't the best possible source of unbiased opinion, either, although their claims that the whaling is sustainable seems t'be backed up by the whaling agreement under which they're operating. Given that they're obeying the limits under that agreement, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until such time as it's demonstrated otherwise.
I think the real junk science here is relying on groups with ulterior motives to evaluate the scientific value of the whaling. Let someone who doesn't want t'have the whales' babies -or- eat the whales' undoubtedly tasty flesh review the research, and I'll listen.
Japan hasn't heard of manatees?
Another group of Whale/cows beached themselves in Japan. Representatives for Greenpeace fought valiantly to save the majestic black and white patterned giants while several thousand Japanese stood by with knives and forks. Several hundred others were on hand with the world's largest bun.
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I can't help but wonder if this wasn't a matter of terminology lost in translation... Female Whale = Cow Male Whale = Bull Young Whale = Calf Cow artificially inseminated by whale = Female Whale inseminated by Male Whale = No outrageous news story.
The number one export of Japan continues to be "Crazy Sh*t".
...or how else would you explain Rosie O'Donnell??
Actually, leaving that out of the summary doesn't just make it sound more ridiculous, it's suspiciously xenophobic. It singles out Japan as doing wacky science. You know, unlike us Europeans or you Americans.
Bit of a reality check:
1. Western companies routinely pay for dubious research that pushes their own agenda. Probably more rabbits and rats smoked tobacco because of tobacco companies trying to prove that smoking is harmless, than because of all other research combined. (And if they want to present test-tube whale babies as ridiculous research, then, hello? Smoking rabbits? When was the last documented time a rabbit just naturally rolled a tobacco leaf and smoked it?)
Or mice were shaved and exposed to UV-B so they'd die of cancer, in an experiment that tried to prove that drinking coffee is good for you in that aspect. Gee, I wonder who the sponsor was there. (And again, seriously, when was the last time a mouse shaved and went to get a tan on his own?)
Anti-depressant companies routinely publish studies where their MAO uptake inhibitors are the best thing since Eden, and routinely junk studies where for various forms of depression other stuff works even better. Yoghurt manufacturers publish studies after studies in which their bacteria are the best thing that could live in your intestine... if they only got past that pesky acid in your stomach. Etc.
2. Western corporate PR routinely carpet-bombs the media with even more bizarre and ridiculous pseudo-science. Scientist discovers formula for the best day to take a vacation! (It doesn't even add the same units and stuff, and it's sponsored by a travel company which runs a promotion for flights in that months. Go figure.) Scientists say: In the future all women will have huge breasts and all men will have huge dicks! (Except it wasn't as much science, as an essay paid for by a magazine.) Scientists discover: Cocoa contains valuable enzymes so chocolate is good for you! (Except they don't exist in chocolate. And it was sponsored by Mars.) Etc.
Still think Japan's actual research in wales looks ridiculous compared to _that_ kind of garbage?
3. If it sounds ridiculous just because it tries to do genetic stuff with wales _and_ cows, I humbly propose the following list of stuff done by the West and China. And that's just off the top of my head. You don't even need to try hard to spin any of them as ridiculous.
- Crossing jellyfish and rabbits to get glow-in-the-dark rabbits.
- Ditto for pigs.
- Ditto to get coloured glow-in-the-dark sperm. (I wonder why the porn industry didn't already jump on that idea. Imagine a bukkake in the dark, where each shot glows a different colour;)
- Getting genes from insects or arachnids into goats, so they'd produce silk strands in their milk.
- Getting mammal-speciffic proteins into fungi, so they'd produce renet. (Actually used by the cheese industry.)
- Making a human embryo with two mothers and a father.
Etc.
I mean, if anyone wants to look at Japan's research as "hur hur hur, Beavis, where in the nature would a whale fuck a cow?"... then, by the same token, heh, exactly when was the last time when a horny spider impregnated a goat? And do female rabbits in heat routinely get their bones jumped by jellyfish? And exactly how would a baby with two mothers and a father happen naturally? It's actually impossible even with two fathers and a mother, but it's at least the kind of thing which some people would believe as an urban legend. But two mothers and a father? Exactly what perverted act would those two women need to do, so the egg of one ends up merged with the egg of the other, before the guy impregnates the result?
Or, I dunno, we could accept that just because taking stuff out of context can make it sound funny, it doesn't mean there can't be a legitimate purpose to doing that kind of research.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's not such a stupid experiment. Cross-species hybrids don't work (except maybe in some rare cases). But why, exactly?
Of course the different species animals don't copulate in the wild (again, maybe rare cases... that's why it's called the wild). Artificial insemination might fail for any number of reasons, none of them simply molecular genetics. Injecting the sperm directly into the egg could possibly show some results, and therefore expose whole mechanisms of reproduction. Even if it fails, the incompatibility is known to extend down to that deep level.
We don't know very much about genetics, especially at the rubber/road juncture, considering how much there is to know. Science works by disproving proposition (when possible), so failures are valuable.
And, if successful, a cowhale could be very valuable, especially in a country like Japan which has a hunger for whale that cows alone can't satisfy.
--
make install -not war
Anybody else visualizing a Far Side comic with 2 whale-cows and a farmer?
> Unique Cow/Whale Hybrid Experiments
I'm not sure how unique these experiments are. That sort of thing happens all the time after my Weight Watchers meetings.
Maybe the Japanese scientists are just huge Wesley Willis fans?
Would a cow/whale hybrid be a Cow-orca?
Divine.
What about a monster that has a piece of celery for one of his hands and one of his legs is replaced with Patrick Duffy! Maybe he could weave wicker baskets as a hobby.
activestudios web design
So that is how the clover field monster was created.
No, it's Rabbit Season!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
43 papers out of how many published?
Is it possible only 43 papers have been written on whales in Japan over the past 18 years? I suspect that this is off by a factor of 10.
combining genetic material of cow and whale labeled bizarre, or is the science in a particular paper that is bizarre?
think about it, people who eat dried, shredded, spiced, squid as a snack, might be a huge market for beef jerky that tastes like whale.
If the whale-cow crossbreeding trials were successful then you can bet that McDonald's in Japan would introduce a new item to their menu: the blubber burger. And they would have a new advertising slogan: "Come to McDonald's for a whale of a good time."
Next experiment: octopus and growth hormone. With women
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
That's the sound a cowhale makes.
<]=)
I think we may have an immense misunderstanding here.
I think a female whale is in fact referred to as a "cow".
Therefore, these experiments are likely whale IVF. Which is still weird, but considerably less so. The real story is Japan's flimsy excuse to do "research" that allows them to continue whaling.
In other words, nothing to see here, move along.
-- Of course I'm paranoid. I'm a sysadmin.
There has been some work done on growing meat muscle directly in artificial environments, but it's only small experimental quantities and it's basically grown in a meat-based broth, so there's no efficiency gain there either. (It's too bad - I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, so if they could grow cultured mystery meat without having to use dead animal juices to feed it, I'd be interested in eating some.) Of course, since it's lab research only, it's not something available at a finite price.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Herein lies the problem. The first, which would have eliminated the need for a whaling fleet, was not attempted, as far as I can tell. No great surprise, given who financed the research. The second is extremely unlikely - whales are ancient, and the genetic differences with their closest land relatives are significant - and don't apply to cows. If they'd worked with hippos, I might be inclined to believe that they took their own research seriously. They're still way too distant for it to be remotely credible, but given it's the closest land relative going, it would at least make some sense. Sure, cows are easier to obtain, but you need to be in a truly Dilbertesque situation, incredibly stupid or believe everyone else to be incredibly stupid, to go in that direction.
(Sadly, many people are incredibly stupid when it comes to bad science, which is why there's so much out there any why it's so profitable. I suggest reviewing the animated Dilbert episode on Chronic Cubicle Syndrome for further information on credulity. It's not restricted to any group of people - plenty of people regarded as geniuses believed incredibly stupid things. Intelligence provides an extra tool to filter out nonsense, but it must be applied for it to work and it is easily negated by flawed assumptions and preconcieved notions. Problem is, as the cartoon notes, it's impossible to investigate everything, which means everyone works from flawed assumptions and preconcieved notions.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
so perhaps they're trying to make use of the abundant ocean real estate (and fishing industry) around Japan with cows modified to thrive off of minimally processed sea nutrients?
I'm not an expert in any of this, but that sounds more plausible than the suggestion that they're trying to breed whale sized cows.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
The history of Whale fishing/hunting goes back as far as 8000 years. And if it were cheaper, more people would probaby eat it today. There are places that soley serve whale cuisine, and to say no normal japanese person would eat it is speaking for *a whole lot of people*.
The rise in whale consumption after WW2 may have to do with a shortage of food, but it also has to do with the navy redirecting their resources. Initially the navy took over many of the larger fishing boats and armed them for miliary use. After the war, they started fishing with them again.
As for rice paddies, no the government does not own them. As far as I know they are owned by farmers, and because of the value of the land, they would rather keep it, doing what they've been doing, than sell it and do something else. If anything, the government has been kicking them off their land to make way for rails, roads and airports.
I propose a study of Slashdot memes to figure out which ones actually DO get you modded into oblivion, because from what I've seen Stale Meme + "I know I'm going to be modded down" == Instant +5, Funny.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
When hearing of this "breakthrough", Cowboy Neal claims prior art.
The Japanese are seriously taking that bukake thing way too far.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
No, seriously, where the hell are the pictures?
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
slavery is acceptable as long as it can be done sustainably, without driving the human population to extinction? Good to know.
Whale reproduction normally involves a cow.
tentacles? Talking about sperm whales, i don't think this is a coincidence.
Clearly this cow-whale hybrid should be marketed under the name of "ShaMOO".
I once tried whale jerky. It had the taste and texture of oversmoked, oversalted, charred deer. I just found this article deliciously topical.
My environmentalist friend wasn't too pleased that I ate it at all, but she begrudgingly let it pass after I declared I would not eat whale again after that experience. Now if they could successfully make a whale-beef hybrid jerky, (whale that tastes like beef and not vice-versa) we all win, no?
...Wow or a Cale?
Parasites routinely pass through the acid in our suffering stomachs.
There would be nothing extraordinary fi bacteria in yoghurt actually do....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Informative? Oh god.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
So the japanese have a huge demand for whale meat, people are willing to pay quite a premium for it. Problem: whales are becoming rare, and consequently the rest of the world is putting pressure on them to quit hunting whales. That presents an opportunity though, it's quite feasible that if there is a ban on whaling, the price of whale meat would go sky high, making alternative methods of harvesting whale meat possible.
It would be nice to farm whales, but there's a problem: you would have to domesticate whales or at least catch a whole bunch live and make them mate... which they don't do in captivity.
Alright, how about artificial impregnation? That would work, except you still have the problem of having very few whales. You'd want to have maybe a hundred whales, and artificial impregnation is not too terribly efficient, and the impregnated whales would need a huge "grazing" area.
Well, then what about using another species as surrogates for whale embryos, letting them grow to a point in captivity, then eating them? Still expensive, but demand is very high, it's a lucrative possibility.
Problem: what animals to use as surrogates? It's going to be even lower efficiency than if you were doing it with whales, so you would want to have a lot of them availiable, they should be well studies animals too with established health guidelines, and most obviously must be able to support a whale of a fetus. Mice? People?
Cows are the pretty obvious choice. If the study had shown that you can use cows as surrogates for whales with few problems, we wouldn't have to worry about whale extinction, the japanese could enjoy their whale meat, problem solved. The only issue would be the inevitable animal rights activists, but those people all have something wrong with their heads anyway.
Spiderpigs.....
I thought we already had these? I mean, they have a different name, but Washington Mutual named their bank after them.
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
I live in Japan now, and I do eat whale every once in a while. I prefer it raw though, as sashimi. Good parts can be extraordinarily delicious.
And I come from a country that frowns upon whale hunting. Personally I don't care much.
I am sure they used Sperm Whales
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Whales are important to whales, and they're important to Western environmentalists for whom they are an object of pseudo-religious devotion, but personally, my life would be unaffected if they were to all simultaneously be teleported to Jupiter. (So long and thanks for all the plankton?) Arguably, the "petty local concern" proves that Japan is *most* impacted by the prescence or absence of whales, since they actually put them to human use, without which they're just a sea sponge which is a few orders of magnitude bigger.
I have yet to hear an argument that whales/dolphins/cows are important and cockroaches/protazoa/the malaria parasite/sea cucumbers are not which is not, at its core, religious.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
It sounds like when dem niggers fucked the apes and we ended up with the AIDS virus.
Japan... crossbreeding... Come on, you know you want to ask!
Where are the catgirls? (in the furry sense, not the crazy girl dressed in leather Batman-style sense)
I believe the argument for saving the whales is their scarcity. We, as humans, have already killed many species to the point of extinction: tazmanian tiger, dodo, etc. We have many protections for MANY other endangered species: manatee, elephants, etc. I think this debate is to whether a species is worth preserving from extinction, even if that dictates that a culture may have to rescind a practice or two in the process.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
I was the first one to post that they were in different orders, ass wipe moderator. Look at the f-ing timestamp. Stupid fuck. Just because someone posted some crap above a post where it doesn't belong doesn't mean that anything below it is redundant. Christ, do us all a favor, and cancel your slashdot account. After that, get an axe and smash your computer, then your head.
WHALES THE BEEF?
We need to do more.
Thought you might be interested in this (though more engineered than cloned, you'd still appreciate it): http://www.tfot.info/pod/1127/animal-friendly-meat.html
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