Slashdot Mirror
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.
activestudios web design
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!
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.
God, schmod. I want my whalecow.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
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 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.
-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
M&Ms
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.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Don't have a cow, man!
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
but rarely to their face
rewriting history since 2109
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 ..
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
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.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
...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.
Anybody else visualizing a Far Side comic with 2 whale-cows and a farmer?
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.
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)
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").
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.
Informative? Oh god.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.