The scientists have cloned the first endangered species, a black-footed ferret duplicated from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.
The scientists have named the slinky predators Elizabeth Ann. These species look cute, but they are quite wild.
Elizabeth Ann was born and raised at a Fish and Wildlife breeding facility in Colorado.
She is a copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988, and its remains where frozen in the early days of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology.
Cloning is a promising technology to bring back extinct or endangered species such as the passenger pigeon. Last years in Texas, scientists have cloned an endangered Mongolian wild horse in the United States.
“Biotechnology and genomic data can make a difference on the ground with conservation efforts,” said Ben Novak, lead scientist at biotechnology-focused conservation nonprofit that coordinated the ferret and horse clonings.
Scientists around the world gathered the population for a captive, breeding program that has released thousands of ferrets on many sites in the United States (US), Canada and Mexico since the 1990s.
Cloning makes a new plant or animal by copying the genes of an existing animal. Texas-based Viagen, a company that clones pet cats for $35,000 and dogs for $50,000, cloned a Przewalski’s horse, a wild horse species from Mongolia born last summer.
