Frozen Ark

A story running on BBC News is either shockingly worrying or stunningly fantastic - in fact I think it is probably both at the same time.

Forget Noah's ark this is Noah's cryogenic test tube. A laboratory in the USA is gathering cells from a variety of animals alive today so that if the species gets close to extinction they can be cloned and their species can be reintroduced.

According to BBC News Online, in theory, no species alive today should ever become extinct, as long as one of the dozen frozen zoos around the world has a cell sample, Dor Betsy Dresser, one of the 'Frozen Zoo' scientists said: "If we'd done this with the dinosaurs... the cells would be alive."

She is talking about the fact that the cells are deep frozen and their metabolic state basically ... well frozen so that they can stay alive - ready to be re-animated when needed - the cells can stay that way for hundreds of years.

The story explains how it works: "Once we've dropped it to the temperature where we know the cryoprotectant is like a slush, we can drop it instantly into liquid nitrogen, and essentially metabolism in the cells just stops."

I like the idea of a species never going extinct, I think it's exciting that we have the technology to prevent it but it is also slightly worrying that we have this technology as well - I can understand bringing back species that we (humanity) have killed off because of de-forestation, poulation or cold blooded killing for sport / warmth / food.

But it doesn worry me slightly that re-instroducing a species that we didn't kill, that died because basically that is part of the natural evolution of this planet might cause some kind of imbalance and tip the scales in favour of one animal over another and change the process of evolution.

Then of course I wonder if evolution has a plan/structure - and then think probably not - it's just survival of the fittest and if what we re-introduce is fitter than the species it kills of then tough on that species and that we could probably just re-introduce that and keep the cycle going - or we could just let things lie and let nature take its natural course.

Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species

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Cloning Cryogenics Animals Zoo