Pulled out of a
previous post's comments, Steve says, intriguingly:
Also-- a better "re- creation" may be the ongoing efforts to breed quaggas out of (possibly conspecific) Burchell's zebras with quagga- like markings. That was going quite well last time I heard-- should check...
And a little Google later, I find that
it continues apace, despite the founder's death.
On 20 January 2005 the most quagga-like foal was born in our selective breeding programme. The striped area of its body is not only much reduced, but the body stripes themselves are considerably narrower and fainter than usual, more so than in some of the museum specimens of the former quagga population. However, there are some stripe remnants on the hocks. Such remnants are not present on the museum specimens.
Sadly, the aurochs may not be as accessible, genetically, as the
recently divergent quagga.
2 comments:
Thanks--I'll post and link.
Did you see Doc Hypercube's further musings on breeding back at Diary of a Mad Natural Historian-- this time on dogs-- and my comments? I may take this up and post more.
I've been following it, although I hadn't checked the comments. I was fascinated by Darren Naish's post about the origins of domestic dogs; like most people I had assumed that wolves were they. I hadn't thought of dr. hypercube's point that those genes may have been lost--I can't think of a reason that, once the path to domesticity was embarked upon, those traits would have been advantageous.
By the way, I was especially interested in the idea that the lack of C. lupus attacks are an historical accident.
Getting in over my head here, especially with my books still in storage...
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