• Question: Is it possible for one species of animal to splice their genetics with another animal to create a hybrid animal?

    Asked by pigeonandnibbler to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Judith McCann

      Judith McCann answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      I think it depends on how much genetic material you wan to get in there. It has been done previously, with infecting a tomato plant with a bacteria that contained the DNA from a fish, the aim was to give the tomato plant to ‘anti-freeze’ properties of the fish!

      This was in plants though and generally speaking there is fr more of an arguement over whether animals SHOULD be genetically engineering- thinking that the spliced DNA would increase the chances of cell mutations and cancers etc. Farmers have been doing a forma of genetic engineering for years, selective breeding, where the strongest bull is mated to the healthiest sheep, it is a kind of improving the chances of good animals by breeding only animals with desirable traits

      as for pigeon-salmon and flying snails, you may have to wait a bit longer!!

    • Photo: Akshat Rathi

      Akshat Rathi answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Thanks for the answer Judith.

    • Photo: Gemma Sharp

      Gemma Sharp answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      When I started my biology degree I focussed on genetics (that quickly changed when I realised genetics was quite hard and zoology was a lot easier and lectures involved more pictures of cute animals and dinosaurs), and whenever people asked me what I wanted to get out of a degree in genetics I used to say I wanted to make a rat-monkey hybrid. It quickly became apparent that that wasn’t going to be possible. There are too many problems – different number of chromosomes means the species are incompatible, which species supports the rat-monkey during pregnancy, will a monkey mother’s body reject rat DNA rather than let it grow inside her, etc.

      I would say it’s a shame, but it’s probably not is it? Imagine if we had rat monkeys running round our cities. They’d probably be bigger than rats, and way more creepy.

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