The Extinct Animal Clone Created - Extinct Pyrenean Ibex Came to Life Again

Another exciting animal news is going to show you the light hope if you really think about animals. Just lay back on your couch and spare a bit of thoughts about how fast animal species are getting extinct day by day. This animal news - a news of endangered species called Pyrenean ibex was flashed out on February 10, 2009 at the National Geographic News panels. Researchers have cloned a bucardo - Pyrenean ibex, which happened to be a subspecies of Spanish ibex that went extinct in 2000. Yes... never before this the extinct animal clone was created - though the clone had a very short span of life! But the good news is that the scientists could successfully create the clone of the extinct species and this was that first time that an extinct animal had been resurrected by cloning. Researchers had cloned endangered animal before this, but cloning of this Pyrenean ibex sparked into a topic of most talked about discussion, because this was the first time that clone had been created for an animal that had officially died out. The journal 'Theriogenology', described how the scientists used the frozen skin of a bucardo in 2003 to clone the extinct animal.

Study co-author Jose Folch, of the Center for Agro-Nutrition Research and Technology in Aragon, Spain said: "We are not especially disappointed for the death of the cloned newborn," Folch explained in an email, because such deaths in cloning experiments are common. We will try to improve the technology in order to increase the efficiency of the cloning process." According to him his team is planning to try cloning another Pyrenean ibex this year or next.

Folch and his team made clone embryos by inserting the DNA of the bucardo into domestic goat eggs. The Bucardo's DNA was sourced from the frozen skin samples taken from the lone specimen in the year 1999. Although the clones were successfully implanted into goat-ibex hybrids, but the baby had a very short span of life! Among all the 208 embryos implanted, only seven goats became pregnant, and just one bucardo were born. The baby bucardo died of respiratory failure almost immediately after the birth. Dissection showed that the bucardo had pulmonary dysfunctions, although the other organs were normal. The researchers said that such abnormalities are not uncommon in cloning. According to the scientists the environment in which an embryo develops should closely match to mitigate the problems during pregnancy.

For about a couple of centuries, wanton hunting had thinned out the population of Pyrenean ibex. The last living bucardo ended its journey in 2000, being hit by a falling heavy branch.

Smithsonian's Wildt recognized the work to be a "highly noteworthy scientific accomplishment" Wildt said "Offspring was produced from an animal well known to have suffered a recent extinction" and the bucardo story "is fascinating, because resurrection-by-cloning was the only option".

New Speices Of Babbler Discovered: Bird Discovery News

Hey... here's another amazing news that was published at ScienceDaily on Feb 8, 2009. The discovery of a new species of babbler - a rare bird has created the buzz around the Internet. Can you guess what it looks like? A bit different from the other babblers that it closely related to. Named after the reserve at which it was discovered, this new species of bird - the Nonggang Babbler has been discovered in the Guangxi province in south-west China, which is located just a few miles away from the border with Vietnam. Until 2005 there was no official news about the Nonggang Babbler. Zhou Fang and Jiang Aiwu from Guangxi University were the first couple of ornithologists, who identified this amazing babbler as an undescribed taxon in 2006. Although the Nonggang Babbler has a very close resemblance with Sooty Babbler and both these species are closely related, yet there are lots of differences in their look and behavior. Compared to Sooty Babbler, the Nonggang Babbler is a bit larger. Nonggang Babbler has white crescent patches behind the ear coverts and dark spots on the upper breast and throat.

The behavior of the Nonggang Babbler matches very much with that of a wren-babbler of genus 'Napothera'. Alike the wren babbler, Nonggang Babbler prefers motionlessness to run to fly, instead of flying off directly from motionlessness. Unlike most of the other species of babblers the Nonggang Babbler invests its time mostly on the ground, foraging for insects under the fallen leaves and gravels.

I am sure their nesting habbit might be a bit different from other birds that we commonly come across. I have been looking for it since a couple of weeks and have already consulted some informative sources. The nesting habits of this new species of babbler has not yet been discovered, as no nests have been found, although around 200 birds have been in observation in Nonggang.

"I have been studying birds in the region since the 1970s but I had never seen it before. Their habitat in the reserve is protected, but as they could also exist in the karst rainforest outside the reserve, logging and burning wood to make charcoal pose a threat to their wider habitat", said ornithologists, Zhou Fang. He also said: "The limestone area in south-western Guangxi is part of the Indo-Burma global biodiversity hotspot and the south-east Chinese Mountains Endemic Bird Area, and is one of the most typical tropical karst regions in the world. The fragility of the karst ecosystem and its destruction by people pose great threats to the bird's existence. Therefore, research and conservation of the birds in this habitat is very urgent".

"Given the bird's small number and its threatened habitat, it's important to include it in the State list of protected species," Zhou says.