Zoo clones critically endangered Przewalski's horse using 42 yr old DNA
January 28, 2023 12:07 AM Subscribe
California zoo clones critically endangered Przewalski's horse using 42-year-old DNA. The foal, named Kurt, was born to a surrogate mother, a domestic quarter horse.
Great news, and what a wonderful foal, thank you chariot pulled by cassowaries.
posted by unearthed at 1:24 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by unearthed at 1:24 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
This was confusing to me because the video and photos in the article show a Przewalski's foal next to what appeared to be a Przewalski's horse mother, not a domestic quarter horse. The linked article seems to be confusing a cloned Przewalski's foal named Kurt born in 2020 with with one just born in December. This current article doesn't have pictures of the foal just born, but use footage from Kurt in 2020 to add to the confusion.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 1:47 AM on January 28, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 1:47 AM on January 28, 2023 [13 favorites]
Kurt is named after former zoo board member Kurt Benirschke, MD, who died in 2018 aged 94.
I thought it was going to be an In Utero reference.
Let's hope they don't learn to open doors.
posted by adept256 at 3:00 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I thought it was going to be an In Utero reference.
Let's hope they don't learn to open doors.
posted by adept256 at 3:00 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I misread the title, with 'clones' as a noun and 'endangered' as a verb, and it sounded bad..
posted by MtDewd at 4:54 AM on January 28, 2023 [47 favorites]
posted by MtDewd at 4:54 AM on January 28, 2023 [47 favorites]
Like MtDewd I also parsed this headline another way. I recently learned ambiguous headlines like this are now called "Crash Blossoms" , as described here (merriam webster)
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 5:52 AM on January 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 5:52 AM on January 28, 2023 [15 favorites]
Those nefarious zoo clones! Przewalski must be so sad. Did they fashion the 42-year old DNA into some kind of club?
posted by q*ben at 6:27 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 6:27 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I just want to say that it took me way too long to figure out that the zoo clones had not critically endangered Przewalski's horse.
posted by Awfki at 6:46 AM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Awfki at 6:46 AM on January 28, 2023 [9 favorites]
Since we were all apparently confused by the headline (which seems to have been disambiguated on the article itself), I feel compelled to drop in my old favorite, Course Allen Part Owns Harms Salmon.
posted by staggernation at 6:53 AM on January 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by staggernation at 6:53 AM on January 28, 2023 [8 favorites]
Still awaiting word on ongoing efforts to clone Przewalski.
posted by phooky at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by phooky at 7:18 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thank you [insert clever name here], I thought I was seeing things.
I kept looking at that photo of the foal and the mare and thinking "that doesn't look like any quarter-horse I've ever seen." And then I started thinking, maybe they clipped the mare to look more like a Przewalski so as not to confuse the foal, and maybe it just has a really strange winter coat (although what it would be doing with a winter coat in San Diego, I couldn't really say), and then I thought that maybe my impression of quarter-horses was just really, really off.
posted by sardonyx at 7:25 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
I kept looking at that photo of the foal and the mare and thinking "that doesn't look like any quarter-horse I've ever seen." And then I started thinking, maybe they clipped the mare to look more like a Przewalski so as not to confuse the foal, and maybe it just has a really strange winter coat (although what it would be doing with a winter coat in San Diego, I couldn't really say), and then I thought that maybe my impression of quarter-horses was just really, really off.
posted by sardonyx at 7:25 AM on January 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
Well, your chariot is being pulled by Przewalski's horses today.
posted by y2karl at 9:08 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 9:08 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Being one of those children obsessed with horses, I had a sticker book that included the Przewalski horse and the quarterhorse, and therefore I was completely confused by that photo. This is great news, though.
posted by acrasis at 9:20 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by acrasis at 9:20 AM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
awww cute horsie! looks like a baby moose with those looooong legs.
posted by supermedusa at 9:24 AM on January 28, 2023
posted by supermedusa at 9:24 AM on January 28, 2023
This brought to mind a British Museum YT vid of conservators in Beirut reassembling ancient glass shattered by the port explosion of August 2020. The incredible effort and talent that can be expended at one end of the scale while at the other, irreplaceable treasure is being lost to laziness, graft, greed, short-sightedness.
posted by brachiopod at 9:30 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by brachiopod at 9:30 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
This reminded me of this article in Smithsonian Magazine about Przewalski horses rewilding in Mongolia.
posted by 15L06 at 10:02 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by 15L06 at 10:02 AM on January 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I watch the San Diego Safari Park Zoo giraffe cam and have had opportunities to film the Prezwalski’s horses a few times. It is hard because their habitat is just out of camera range for the giraffe cam. I’m looking for some of my linked film. It’s not recent.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:14 AM on January 28, 2023
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:14 AM on January 28, 2023
This was confusing to me because the video and photos in the article show a Przewalski's foal next to what appeared to be a Przewalski's horse mother, not a domestic quarter horse.
I thought the same. Kurt was born in 2020- here he is with his mom.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:37 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I thought the same. Kurt was born in 2020- here he is with his mom.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:37 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
And here is Kurt more recently, running around and doing horse things.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:38 PM on January 28, 2023
posted by oneirodynia at 1:38 PM on January 28, 2023
Very cool, particularly coming on the heels (hoofs?) of this article about the comeback of spirit horses - descended from horses imported from Spain a few centuries back.
posted by sudogeek at 2:28 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by sudogeek at 2:28 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'll be curious to learn if being born to and possibly nursed by a surrogate mother impacts the little one's temperament in any way. I certainly hope not, but this reminds me that whenever I take the twins to Monarto Zoo the guides take care to point out that Przewalski's Horse is completely untameable and unrideable, to which my children hear me reflexively mutter "Yeah, that Gram Parsons is full of shit, man."
posted by MarchHare at 3:58 PM on January 28, 2023
posted by MarchHare at 3:58 PM on January 28, 2023
I misread the title, with 'clones' as a noun and 'endangered' as a verb, and it sounded bad..
Crash Blossom!
posted by srboisvert at 5:26 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Crash Blossom!
posted by srboisvert at 5:26 PM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
The incredible effort and talent that can be expended at one end of the scale while at the other, irreplaceable treasure is being lost to laziness, graft, greed, short-sightedness.
The Rare Seeds That Escaped Syria for an Arctic Vault
n 2014, the remaining staff of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, fled their beloved gene bank in Tel Hadia, 20 miles south of Aleppo. Syria’s civil war, which had broken out three years earlier, had finally made the staffing of the facility untenable. But the scientists had already shipped off a resource of incalculable value: the seeds of the most important crops on Earth.
The destination of these little bits of genetic information was the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a frigid facility sticking out of the permafrost on a remote Arctic island.
Not mentioned in the article, the seed-bank was originally held in Lebanon, but had to be moved to Syria because of the Lebanese civil war.
Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change
We're trying but we just keep... I dunno. Last year the Russians were shelling an active nuclear power plant. All the progress we've made, all the effort to preserve things, we'll destroy it all for the dumbest fucking reasons.
posted by adept256 at 7:38 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
The Rare Seeds That Escaped Syria for an Arctic Vault
n 2014, the remaining staff of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, or ICARDA, fled their beloved gene bank in Tel Hadia, 20 miles south of Aleppo. Syria’s civil war, which had broken out three years earlier, had finally made the staffing of the facility untenable. But the scientists had already shipped off a resource of incalculable value: the seeds of the most important crops on Earth.
The destination of these little bits of genetic information was the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a frigid facility sticking out of the permafrost on a remote Arctic island.
Not mentioned in the article, the seed-bank was originally held in Lebanon, but had to be moved to Syria because of the Lebanese civil war.
Arctic stronghold of world’s seeds flooded after permafrost melts
No seeds were lost but the ability of the rock vault to provide failsafe protection against all disasters is now threatened by climate change
We're trying but we just keep... I dunno. Last year the Russians were shelling an active nuclear power plant. All the progress we've made, all the effort to preserve things, we'll destroy it all for the dumbest fucking reasons.
posted by adept256 at 7:38 PM on January 28, 2023 [3 favorites]
I spotted two of the takhi today. Processing film now.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:29 PM on January 29, 2023
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:29 PM on January 29, 2023
Single YT link
https://youtu.be/H-FRw2e-RCw
You may need to copy and past the link. I forgot how to hyperlink it here.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:34 PM on January 29, 2023
https://youtu.be/H-FRw2e-RCw
You may need to copy and past the link. I forgot how to hyperlink it here.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:34 PM on January 29, 2023
The Smithsonian article linked to above is a very good read if you wanted to know more about these horses and efforts to bring the wild population back in Mongolia.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 8:33 AM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 8:33 AM on January 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I kept looking at that photo of the foal and the mare and thinking "that doesn't look like any quarter-horse I've ever seen." And then I started thinking, maybe they clipped the mare to look more like a Przewalski so as not to confuse the foal, and maybe it just has a really strange winter coat (although what it would be doing with a winter coat in San Diego, I couldn't really say), and then I thought that maybe my impression of quarter-horses was just really, really off.
I did all of this, down to the “maybe they cut the mothers mane”, assumed I didn’t know what a quarter horse looked like even though I thought I did, and then moved on to something else. But this niggling feeling in the back of my head made me go back and dig more. I was really bothered by it apparently, my brain would not let it go.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I did all of this, down to the “maybe they cut the mothers mane”, assumed I didn’t know what a quarter horse looked like even though I thought I did, and then moved on to something else. But this niggling feeling in the back of my head made me go back and dig more. I was really bothered by it apparently, my brain would not let it go.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:39 PM on January 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I got lucky and got the filly on film SYT link:
https://youtu.be/CL1JKEPPw_Y
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 1:29 PM on February 3, 2023
https://youtu.be/CL1JKEPPw_Y
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 1:29 PM on February 3, 2023
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posted by Meatbomb at 1:03 AM on January 28, 2023 [1 favorite]