More Cloning in Japan – This time an Amami Rabbit
Scientists at Japan’s Kinki University have cloned an embryo of an Amami Rabbit and are awaiting its birth next month. The Osaka based researchers cloned the endangered rabbit by taking a cell from the ear of a dead Amami rabbit and injected it into the unfertilized egg of an ordinary Amami lab rabbit. After the egg developed into the cloned embryo, researchers inserted it into the oviduct of a lab rabbit surrogate mother. Although the chances of a successful pregnancy are slim the clone offspring will be born in the coming weeks and if unsuccessful due to the high failure rate of cloning pregnancies. The scientists are prepared to repeat the process until a “healthy” clone is born.
About the Amami Rabbit
The Amami Rabbit or Amami no Kuro Usagi, also known as the Ryukyu Rabbit, is a primitive dark-furred rabbit which is only found in Amami Ōshima and Toku-no-Shima, two small islands between southern Kyūshū and Okinawa in Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan. Often called a living fossil, the Amami Rabbit is a living remnant of ancient rabbits that once lived on the Asian mainland, where they died out, remaining only on the two small islands where they survive today.
Amami Rabbit
Via – Pink Tentacle
[fluke]
Japanese scientists pwn American scientists! When’s the last time you heard them discover something significant? The last thing I heard from them is that redheads feel more pain. Yeah. That’s gonna change the world.