Shaggy dogs do it, snakes do it, and now a new breed of sheep will do it–molt, that is. A British breeder has created the country’s first self-shearing sheep, which will shed its wool once the weather gets warmer, thus saving farmers the time and bother of shearing.
The new sheep is called “Exlana,” which is Latin for “used to have wool.” It was created by crossing exotic breeds like the Barbados Blackbelly and the St. Croix.
The result was a sheep with a thin wool coat that it sheds in the spring. Breeders say it produces substantially less wool than the typical British sheep, making the process quicker: While a normal sheep produces almost 20 pounds of wool, the Exlana yields just one pound.
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Doctors and zombies find themselves on the opposite sides of most issues, so the world would be well advised to take notice of one question where they entirely agree: We need more organs.
More than a hundred thousand people are on the waiting list for organ donations, and 19 die each day because they can’t get an organ in time. Fortunately, scientists are working hard to find ways to create them—including growing them in the lab. Others are using polymers to help regenerate key tissues, and researchers have even tried growing organs in a healthy person’s body. Now, the latest buzz over organ generation comes from Japan, where scientists claim they have grown a spare chimpanzee pancreas in a sheep’s underbelly.
To grow the organ, Jichi Medical University’s Yutaka Hanazono used “sheep-based chimera organ technology,” a method that implanted chimp stem cells in a sheep to grow an extra pancreas. Hanazono claims this is a much better way to grow organs than trying to grow them in test tubes.
Scientists say it’s going to be a good 10 years or so before they will take human stem cells and grow human livers, hearts, pancreases and skin. For now, the extra pancreas could only really help out a diabetic chimp.
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Image: flickr/ Alvaro Herreras
