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Science

Jurassic Chickens 25

Posted by michael from the regular,-extra-crispy-or-jurassic dept.
guantamanera writes: "Mutating chickens. The BBC has this story. About cloning chickens, and transforming them into something else."
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Jurassic Chickens More

Jurassic Chickens

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  • Re:Chickens? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than any other creature on earth at the present time. Don't be so quick to assume that just because a lizard resembles a dinasuar more than a bird, that there is a greater degree of genetic comonality. A theory circulating is that dinosaurs had feathers, and there have been fossils found indicating such. The use of chickens is a fair choice, it is very easy to breed chickens, and you can eat your mistakes. Can't necessarly say the same for pigeon.

    http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/feather3.ht m

    http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-321.htm

    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:5471AWXgUkI :2 04.202.137.111/sections/science/DailyNews/dinobird 980623.html+feathered+dinosaur&hl=en

  • tsarina wrote:
    But I suppose chickens are much easier to work with in a lab than Komodo dragons. Try getting a DNA sample from a giant lizard with sharp teeth encrusted with lethal bacteria!

    Well, getting a DNA sample is actually much easier than one would want it to be. Surviving is the tricky part.

    :-)

  • I am very scared about their comment about
    chickens with teeth!

    I am becoming more and more fond of the saying:

    "just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD!"

    but seriously, people need to quit mucking with
    nature before bad shit happens...
  • The use of chickens is a fair choice, it is very easy to breed chickens, and you can eat your mistakes.

    Not to be unduly incredulous, but what makes you think you'd actually want to eat any animal whose genetic modifications have led to "failure"? Assuming you were successful enough to get something resembling non-mush, how many toxins might this ungodly genetic abomination have synthesized it its brief, torturous existence? Corn that's been spliced with a potato, that I'll eat. Devolved chicken?

    Software is made to be reverse engineered; chickens are not.

  • The thing about chicken teeth is old [129.219.245.62] as the hills and the rest is pure speculative content of the type that was bandied around at the time of JP1. I can't even blame /. - it was actually reported by the Beeb. Shame on them.
    --

  • Re:Who would pay for it? (Score:3)

    by OmegaDan ( 101255 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @12:07PM (#74771) Homepage
    I work in a research facility at UC Riverside (sysadmin), I can tell you there is a BUTTLOAD of money out there for research ... it is however heavily competed for ... the Nation Science Foundation, Air Force, large corporations hand out money like candy

    BUT, your right -- theres never gonna be a research grant for makeing a dinosaur chicken simply because the idea is stupid :)

  • Engineering a chicken into a T Rex?

    Isn't this the plot behind a crappy movie?
  • In stunning genetic breakthrough Dr. Mephisto has managed to produce a seven-assed dinosaur from the DNA of a modern chicken. We take you now to South Park, Colorado for this report...
  • Corn that's been spliced with a potato, that I'll eat. Devolved chicken?

    Hmmmm. Potato + Corn, spliced, equals ... PORN! With chicks, too! Yay!


    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • What I find intriguing about this is what might happen if (read: when) someone with an underdeveloped sense of ethics tries a similar technique on humans. I've read a few articles about how modern humans may not have derived strictly from the Cro-Magnon strain, but by miscegenation between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. Ethical questions aside, it would be an intersting window into human origins, and could clear up more than one debate on the subject...

    Ethical questions not aside, that really squicks me. Someday they'll be able to run just such an experiment and bring a "retro-hybrid" fetus of that sort to term. And what do you do with a kinda-sorta-human living experiment like that? Terminate it when you're finished with the experiment? Raise it as part of a regular human family? Raise it in a Skinner box? Put it on a subway in Brooklyn and see who notices?

    Weird weird weird.

    OK,
    - B
    --

  • ...if jurassic park would have been the same success if its main dino was a tyranysouras pecks...

  • Dinosaurs really do taste like chicken!!!
  • The use of chickens is a fair choice, it is very easy to breed chickens, and you can eat your mistakes. Can't necessarly say the same for pigeon.

    I don't know about that. This [homeofgoodfood.co.uk] doesn't sound too bad.

    Dancin Santa
  • We put much pride in our pigeons. We only use the finest birds with the brightest plumage in our dishes. These pigeons are hand-fed grain and the utmost care is taken to prevent scarring of flesh when knocking them off telephone wires with a .22

    Check please.

    Dancin Santa
  • All this means is that one day there will be Zoos full of better animals designed to intrigue and amuse the nations' upper crust.

    Girl:Daddy, What is that amusing creature?
    Daddy:That's the Fantastahippopotafly, old chap.
    Girl:Daddy, is old chap really an appropriate nickname for a girl?
    Daddy:No time to think about it old sport! We've got to hurry of we're going to see the Ultimangaroo bloom.
    Girl:I understand that it is sure to intrigue me!
    Daddy:You can count on it, old chap.

    I worked at a zoo not long ago...
    • A theory circulating is that dinosaurs had feathers

    A nice speculative rendition of feathered raptors can be found here:

    http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~luisrey/html/custom.htm [ndirect.co.uk]

    There's also some nice work (by Greg Paul I think) that shows deinonychus as a giant wattled killer turkey. Challenging, but fun. It starts from the premise of "So, why do you think dinosaurs didn't have feathers?"

    • What I find intriguing about this is what might happen if (read: when) someone with an underdeveloped sense of ethics tries a similar technique on humans

    Sure, life is cheap. Although it's maybe more likely that we'll come at it from the other side.

    Let me present this to you. There are more differences between zebra and shetland pony DNA (and they can produce viable offspring [bbc.co.uk]) than there are between human and chimpanzee or even gorilla.

    "In experiments by Carlos Moraes at the University of Miami, for example, cells that contained a mixture of human nuclear genes and chimpanzee or gorilla mitochondria generally survived" [washingtonpost.com]

    Where do we draw the line? The experiments are going on right now. Time to decide.

  • In Larry Niven's The Flight of The Horse, a scientist tries to feed the world by growing huge ostriches. unfortunately the ostriches were neotenic monsters and grew up into giant rocs. There was another story in the same book about the president's science advisor being regressed into homo habilis.

    moral: the egg came before the chicken.

  • I am very scared about their comment about chickens with teeth!

    Me too. When I was a child, one of my friends played a trick on my and locked me in a henhouse with rooster known to have a bad temper. It scared me so much I ripped the henhouse door off its hinges to get out. Granted, that same rooster wouldn't scare me at all now -- I could kick it across the chicken yard. But if it had teeth? Yikes! Roosters can be ferocious enough without them. Ever see a 'cock fight?

    GreyPoopon
    --

  • That was a lot funnier than it should have been...
  • Yeah... why did the T-Rex cross the road?

    To get to the sequel.
    (shouldn't he be running AWAY from all Jurassic Park sequels?)
  • I don't see why they're using chickens for this. I mean, yeah, birds evolved from dinosaurs, but you would think that modern lizards would be more closely related. A Komodo dragon would need very few changes - it's already a monster! But I suppose chickens are much easier to work with in a lab than Komodo dragons. Try getting a DNA sample from a giant lizard with sharp teeth encrusted with lethal bacteria!
  • Actually I can think of at least one use for chickenosaurs, if the process ever becomes cheap enough (well, it needs to be created first) it would be a great way to help fedd third world countries. Imagine, one small chicken that feeds maybe 2 or 3, becoming one big ass chickenosaur that feeds 20-30 people, combine this technology with cloning and hunger will be no more. Another added benefit would be having the choice between 30 different kinds ofchicken at the supermarket......hmmmm, should we get the original chickenosaur or the T-ricken?
  • Aside from the question of WHY people would want to reengineer chickens into dinosaurs (perhaps "because we can" suffices), WHO would pay for it? Let's face facts: basic science gets very little funding in the U.S. today. If you aren't curing a disease or building weapons it's hard to get money.

    Maybe the Brits are working on a missile-intercepting pteridactyl?

  • the return of EL POLLO DIABLO!!!

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