Montana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating Massive Franken-Sheep With Cloned Animal Parts

SeaJ@lemm.ee to News@lemmy.world – 77 points –
Montana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating Massive Franken-Sheep With Cloned Animal Parts
yahoo.com
29

If an 80 year old rancher can source parts for DNA, and then clone and breed the resulting animal, and also sell it's semen to other people across the country... Wtf else is going on with cloning no one knows about?

I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.

Certainly sounds like there are lab services out there willing to play things a bit loose. Although I’m guessing you could substitute testicles for every instance of “animal parts” in the article. So more IVF than Jurassic Park. Although “Alternative Animal Ranch” really does inspire an Island of Dr. Moreau vibe.

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Wait, how did he clone the sheep? That's a key part that seems to be glossed over.

The man cloned an animal and made a hybrid super sheep and the article just barely mentions the cloning!

It's like if a guy got stopped while riding a motorcycle with a shark over his shoulder, and a news article only mentioned the shark in passing. Explain the shark, please!

Edit: spelling

More info here:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/montana-man-pleads-guilty-federal-wildlife-trafficking-charges-part-yearslong-effort-create

He sent them into a lab to get cloned and then implanted the embryos into ewes. He got one pure argali male sheep out of that and then artificially inseminated other ewes with the argali sheep to produce hybrids.

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Someone is going to go over this law with a fine toothed comb.

Importing endangered animals? Clearly illegal.

Killing endangered animals and bringing in parts? Clearly illegal.

Bringing in endangered animal DNA and making more endangered animals? 🤔

I dunno... I'm not well versed enough in law, ecology, or animal husbandry. It really feels like this is a new area.

Let's take the hunting angle out of it. Say I brought in Siberian Tiger DNA for the express purpose of creating and breeding tigers and hybrids in captivity... wouldn't that just be species preservation?

Yeah, I can't see why they wouldn't be able to do this. As long as you're not abusing and torturing them I don't see a problem. Just make sure the animals don't escape into the wild.

THIS. IS. FUCKING. AWESOME.

Did you read the article? There's something just a little uncool about genetically modifying animals to be more profitable hunting trophies. Dude can rot for all I care.

Nah, I have to disagree. Is it completly morally bankrupt? Almost certainly. Is it uncool though? Nah, that is mad-scientist-grade cool as fuck. I will graciously accept y'all's excoriation.

We do it to the food we eat, whys there a line?

He smuggled bits of endangered sheep from Europe.

Yeah the way he did it wasn’t the best and if any escapes there’s definitely potentially downsides, but at the same time, the ingenuity is something else.

We eat to sustain life.

And entertainment is just as important to a satisfying full life as food is. Once mental health starts declining, so does everything else, even basic health. So it’s arguably even more important, since depression can kill your will to hunt/forage or even eat.

Ignore the poor edit job.