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Posted: Jun 12 2012 04:27 pm

something cute for the day

Quote:

Under normal circumstances, the relations between dogs and cats tend to be frigid and adversarial -- but one brave Shar Pei is proving that those age-old interspecies grudges are nothing compared to a bit of motherly love.

Just last month, two endangered Siberian tigers, named Clyopa and Plyusha, were born and then sadly rejected by their mother at a zoo in Russia. Fearing the worst for the adorable pair , zookeepers soon were fortunate to find them an unlikely adoptive parent through a local dog breeding club: a nursing Shar Pei named Cleopatra, who had recently given birth to a little litter of her own.

According to a report from Russia's RIA Novosti, Cleopatra welcomed the orphaned tigers into her wrinkly young family and to her life-giving milk without a second thought. The tigers too seem to have taken to their new surroundings and puppy counterparts quite well.

"The baby tigers will spend about 30 more days with Cleopatra and her family, where they will grow stronger and become accustomed to humans. After that, Clyopa and Plyusha will then return to the zoo."

The Shar Pei's remarkable show of canine-feline solidarity isn't just gush-inspiring -- it's hope-inspiring as well. In the wild, Siberian tiger populations have been reduced to just a few hundred members. Until conservation efforts are effective in curbing the big cat's decline, captive tigers like Clyopa and Plyusha help ensure that the majestic species won't be lost forever.

just thought it was cute

http://x.co/l4Yq

Posted: Jun 14 2012 06:09 pm

Well I thought this was fucking adorable.

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

That's inspirational AND adorable.

But I have a question regarding their status of endangerment: we can clone things easily enough; couldn't we prevent a species from going extinct by taking a sample of their DNA and preserving it?

Posted: Jun 14 2012 11:43 pm

Drew Linky wrote:

That's inspirational AND adorable.

But I have a question regarding their status of endangerment: we can clone things easily enough; couldn't we prevent a species from going extinct by taking a sample of their DNA and preserving it?

I'm sure someone with a stronger background in biology is going to come in and tell me to screw off, but there are a few problems with cloning. First off, it's expensive. Second, and here's the big one, it creates an exact replica, which decreases the gene pool, and having a bunch of inbred endangered animals running about doesn't do much to help the species. Also, cloning still requires a blastocyst, so we can't just create a creature from a strand of DNA. We actually need a working egg and sperm.

Wizard Joined: Jun 12 2009 Posts: 4209

BlazingGlory wrote:

Drew Linky wrote:

That's inspirational AND adorable.

But I have a question regarding their status of endangerment: we can clone things easily enough; couldn't we prevent a species from going extinct by taking a sample of their DNA and preserving it?

I'm sure someone with a stronger background in biology is going to come in and tell me to screw off, but there are a few problems with cloning. First off, it's expensive. Second, and here's the big one, it creates an exact replica, which decreases the gene pool, and having a bunch of inbred endangered animals running about doesn't do much to help the species. Also, cloning still requires a blastocyst, so we can't just create a creature from a strand of DNA. We actually need a working egg and sperm.

I never understood it to work that way. Thank you for clearing that up.

Posted: Jun 16 2012 08:01 pm

Do you think they'll figure out how to synthesize blastocysts in the next, say, 50 years?