In another edition of “invasive species are a bad idea,” Australia is suffering a plague of feral camels (on top of the rabbit brouhaha, the cane toad fracas, and the red fox situation). Imported by those clever British settlers to work in the desert in the late 19th century, these dromedaries were released into the wild when trains and machinery took over the work. Now, there are more than a million kicking around the outback, and they are coming to eat your air conditioner. And your toilet. And anything else that might have water in it.
Posts Tagged ‘camels’
We’ll See Your Sheep and Raise You 50: Dubai Scientists Clone the First Camel
Injaz—the world’s first cloned camel—was born last Wednesday in Dubai. It wasn’t easy—the process took the Camel and Reproduction Centre (CRC) and the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory a good five years, all to create a 66-pound baby.
Nisar Wani, a researcher at the CRC, removed DNA from cells in the ovaries from an unfortunate camel who was chopped up for meat in 2005. The salvaged DNA was then put into a surrogate mother’s egg to produce the clone, after gestating for just over a year.

