Woolly mammoth to walk again in four years
If you thought Edinburgh Zoo pulled off a PR coup with a couple of Pandas try this one for size: The Woolly Mammoth may be back within four years. The Drum's irrelevant, but interesting story of the day.
Wakayama believes the mammoth task has been made considerably smaller after the Japanese scientist successfully cloned a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been in cold storage for 16 years.
Though the timescales (and scales) involved with the mammoth are considerably greater Wakayama claims he isn’t trying to pull the wool over our eyes and is confident that the same scientific principles hold true.
This involves tracking down a suitably chilled specimen and extracting sufficient soft tissue to replicate the process, a challenge which the scientist is itching to address with a planned expedition to Siberia.
If successful in his hunt Wakayama will insert the nuclei into egg cells of an African elephant, which will act as a surrogate mother, giving birth to her hairy offspring in as little as four years.
It means that unwanted woolly jumpers received in Christmas 2015 could be a whole lot cooler and penguins might find themselves knocked down the pecking order at the local zoo.