sutton026

D on’t get me wrong, I am happy that there is something like the Quagga Project, and I like their current breeding results. But they make a number of claims that I simply cannot agree with. The Quagga Project pretends that they are able to – or even did already – recreate the quagga by selective breeding with extant Plains zebras. They argue that since the quagga nowadays is classified as a subspecies of the Plains zebra it might even be only a colour variety with the only features making it distinct being the coat pattern. Furthermore, they say that since it was not a species on its own, the genes responsible for their colour scheme might still be present in extant Plains zebras just have to be united. And since the quagga displayed individual variation regarding the intensity of their stripe pattern, a rough overlap with the original and not necessarily a total match is required to call their results “quagga”. “ However, the extinct quagga was not a zebra specie...

T he tempting idea of cloning a woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius , inspired by some exceptionally well preserved specimens in the arctic permafrost, is always causing a lot of media attention. Rumors are making the round, of alleged break-throughs, claims that it is all a hoax and scientists that are either very confident or very skeptical on cloning this magnificant and iconic elephant that was no more ancient than the extant three species. Several ways have been proposed on how it could be done. For example, inseminating an Asian elephant cow with a reconstructed mammoth sperm and subsequent absorptive breeding. A more effective and modern idea is the CRISPR method that is favourised by a number of scientists today. To put it simply, CRISPR is about cutting (splicing) a DNA strand (in this case, an Asian elephant's) at the loci where it differs from the template (mammoth) and to exchange the original base pairs with the ancient ones to create an ever increasingly mammoth-lik...

A s everybody should know, the extremely low diversity of the contemporary gene pool of the Wisent after the severe bottleneck event during the 1920s and 30s is the most immediate danger for the species’ long-term existence. In this post I outlined how the high degree of inbreeding affects the health and fertility of the global population. I proposed careful, controlled introgression of the American bison as a probable way to add more genetic diversity and resistance to diseases without affecting looks, behaviour and ecology of the Wisent too much, documented in an own breeding book. When writing my post on extinct species that might one day be revived throughcloning , I came up with another idea helping the Wisent to get out of its genetic misère.     A well-preserved bone from the early Holocene made it possible to fully sequence the genome of a 9,000 years old aurochs bull. If this is possible, it must be feasible to do the same with the genome of an ancient Wisen...

F aia Brava is a reserve in Portugal that houses one of the two Iberian Tauros cattle herds. So far, this herd is composed of rather nice-looking Maronesa cows and two Sayaguesa bulls that have been added last year. Now, a few newborn calves have been spotted. It is unclear whether the Sayaguesa bulls are the fathers of the new Tauros cattle yet.  Go here for the article on Rewilding Europe. The Maronesa cows have a good build and the horns are ok as well, but their colour is pretty dark. I think that they will have to add a breed that contributes a more definite sexual dichromatism in the future, and they might also need more horn thickness. I don't know how large the bulls and cows are, but I estimate the cross bulls might reach a size of 150 cm or so, but this is just a wild guess.

You must be warned, this post might get a little bit emotional on some passages. O f all the myths surrounding Heck cattle, this one is perhaps the most repelling. It states that the idea and attempt to rebreed the aurochs is a product of a national socialist Germanic cult and that the Heck brothers themselves were Nazis and therefore their Heck cattle are “Nazi cows”. I know that especially in the English speaking world everything that has to do with the national socialists is entertaining, especially when it is something as grotesque as “Nazi cows”. But try not to turn the facts, make up stories, or claim things that are simply not true. What is purported in forums, on blogs, sometimes on Wikipedia and that god-awful NatGeo “documentary” concerning "nazi cows" is simply not true.   In this post I am going to cover the relationship of the Heck brothers to the national socialist regime and what their true motives of their breeding-back attempts were. Were the Heck broth...

A while ago in my dedomestication series, I wrote that the feral pigs in the South of the USA are a good example for a regression towards the wild type through natural selection. "Although not identical, they bear a considerable resemblance to wild boars in looks, behaviour and movement. They have a body build for agility and strength, and that's how they move. Their tusks are well-pronounced as they have a social and defensive function. The skull is very elongated, as much as in the wild boar – perhaps this is an example of a “reversal” of paedomorphism as described above through developmental cascades [UPDATE: I was pointed out to a paper that suggests that the elongated snout of feral pigs is a result of phenotypic plasticity due to the chewing mechanism]. What is also striking is their (with a few exceptions) uniform fur colour, beautiful mud-coloured brown or very dark, almost black, brown (not as greyish as in the European wild boar) – very likely camouflage in forest...