The US Has a Cloned Sheep Contraband Problem (wired.com)
- Reference: 0175458247
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/11/12/2022205/the-us-has-a-cloned-sheep-contraband-problem
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-has-a-cloned-sheep-contraband-problem-montana-mountain-king/
The cloned animal, named Montana Mountain King, was used to inseminate over 100 ewes, creating a network of unauthorized hybrid offspring. Court documents reveal that Schubarth sold these hybrids to big game hunting enthusiasts, with prices reaching $10,000 per animal. While the original cloned sheep is now housed at New York's Rosamond Gifford Zoo, authorities cannot account for most of its descendants.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-has-a-cloned-sheep-contraband-problem-montana-mountain-king/
Dirty deeds (Score:5, Funny)
Done with (cloned) sheep.
the sheep is not a creature of the air. (Score:2)
"Well why don't you just remove Harold?"
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Even to this day, sounds to me like
Dir-ty Deeds
Thun-der Cheeks
6 Months? (Score:2)
Why only 6 months in jail?
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Because it's a non-violent offense and they don't lock people up for long on those? Nobody was hurt, this is just a regulation violation.
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the dude who did it is also like 81 years old. if he were younger, like say 25, he would have gotten jailtime in years rather than months to prevent repeat offenders
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You'd give a 25 year old years in prison for sheep cloning? In the same country we don't even prosecute many real felonies that hurt real people?
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Too bad he didn't work for EcoHealth Alliance. He'd have gotten off scott free.
Redneck Cloning (Score:3)
It seems kind of funny that cloning is so easy that some dude can just do it outside of a multibillion dollar research lab. I'm sure I couldn't do it in my back yard yet or download dna from the internet and reproduce life forms in my back yard yet. But its come a long way, and it seems with in reach if there was a market for random genomed animals.
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> (...) or download dna from the internet and reproduce life forms in my back yard yet
Well.... downloading DNA from the internet and printing out the DNA seems to be surprisingly cheap: [1]https://www.labx.com/categorie... [labx.com]
Don't know about growing anything from that.
[1] https://www.labx.com/categories/dna-synthesizers
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You can't grow anything from DNA, you need and already living organism. And even then there's mitochondrial DNA, RNA, and a bunch of other things that have to be 'just right'.
What you can do, though, is get DNA for one kind of sheep and put it in the egg of a sheep of another kind and then let nature produce a sheep that will be almost, but not quite, what you trying to duplicate. It starts to get exponentially more complex a procedure to do anything less basic.
I'm still surprised that is now an option ou
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I believe that's what was done here. Except, instead of downloading the DNA, he brought back some tissue.
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Wait til they have 3d printers for living things.
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You can actually. Kits to insert genes into bacteria are cheap and common. Example: [1]https://www.bio-rad.com/en-ca/... [bio-rad.com]
Once you can do that, writing custom DNA and getting it printed into plasmids is reasonably straightforward.
Scaling up to multicellular organisms is a bit harder, although people have been cloning plants for thousands of years. For mammals it's still a back yard accessible activity though:
[2]https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
[3]https://jasbsci.biomedcentral.... [biomedcentral.com]
The cloning in this story is a bit of a
[1] https://www.bio-rad.com/en-ca/product/pglo-bacterial-transformation-kit?ID=619b8f74-9d3f-4c2f-a795-8a27e67598b7
[2] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2670-handmade-cloning-cheap-and-easy/
[3] https://jasbsci.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40104-015-0043-y
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Indeed, I'm sure he would have been much happier to import a few breeding pair. That can work out terribly (Burmese python) but I believe it has also worked out well (Ostriches) in some cases. ar
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Now they can F! their relatives twice!
Why is this illegal? (Score:3)
He's breeding sheep, who cares??? He isn't cloning a T-Rex.
Because Kyrgyzstan Re:Why is this illegal? (Score:2)
Bringing live/viable animal/plant/whatever products is usually regulated to prevent unwanted pests/non-native species from disrupting the local ecosystem.
Even within the United States, there are similar rules involving interstate commerce and, in some cases (such as quarantine enforcement), intrastate commerce.
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The subtitle for the wired article calls it a "giant" sheep species. So presumably invasive spread, as would be expected, is the concern. I wonder if importing the parts and then cloning it was an intentional way to circumvent the import regulations, it doesn't seem to say in a clear way. That would seem of unclear legality on its face, as importing parts is maybe not illegal, and neither is cloning. The article says the owner contracted with a lab to make the clone, and I would presume there is some pa
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Are we really worried about tens of thousands of giant wild sheep roaming the planes, eating all the grass and weeds?
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He didn't bring a live/viable animal. He brought a small amount of tissue used for cloning. That doesn't mean that these cloned sheep couldn't cause similar ecosystem disruption. But he most certainly didn't bring a live animal.
Re: Because Kyrgyzstan Re:Why is this illegal? (Score:2)
âoeInstantiated a live animalâ is probably a better way to phrase his offense.
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They're giant sheep. They won't cause any problem that an open hunting season won't fix.
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Probably same fear as hogs in some places. No/insufficient natural predators and pathogens for that type of animal, so it spreads out of control and starts causing damage to humans.
Bring on the cloned T-Wrecks (Score:2)
Cloning a T-Rex would be of less consequence than recklessly enabling crossbreeding of non-native herd animals. A cloned T-Rex breaks loose from a Montana ranch, problem is solved when winter arrives. If botched genetic traits get introduced across herds, it gets real messy & expensive to eradicate.
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A cloned T-Rex breaks loose from a Montana ranch, problem is solved when winter arrives.
Are you sure? T-Rex could very well [1]have been warm-blooded [bbc.co.uk].
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/61587686
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Probably it was warm-blooded, but it was also probably big enough that it didn't matter. Cube volume for energy generation but square surface for energy dissipation. Large animals don't need to be warm blooded to maintain their heat. (Living in the ocean is a special case, as water conducts heat really well. OTOH, oceans never freeze except at the surface.)
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So somehow all the invasive species disaster stories have slid right past you? Killer bees, anyone?
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Killer bees were the huge scare in the 1970s, but by the time they got here, they were so crossbred that they were no longer very aggressive. So not sure what point you're trying to make there. Nothing happened with the bees. Maybe you meant Murder Hornets?
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I always sort of vaguely wondered what happened to the killer bees, thanks.
I'm still concerned about the tornado launched flying laser headed sharks, though. Any word on those?
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> So somehow all the invasive species disaster stories have slid right past you? Killer bees, anyone?
Actually, there is already a [1]documentary [wikipedia.org] about this exact thing! Scary stuff
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_(2006_New_Zealand_film)
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Burmese python are a better example. They are also hybridizing with native snakes.
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Just wait until it's humans. Try fixing that mess.
Mango Fatt (Score:2)
> Just wait until it's humans. Try fixing that mess.
Ahhh shit, an endless supply of the orange jesus! Kill me now!!!
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Indeed invasive species have never hurt anything, Australia worked out fine right?
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> He isn't cloning a T-Rex.
So what cloning would you allow without any regulation? That's really the issue. Unlike breeding cloning can lead to new species being introduced into environments where they can become problems. As crimes go it is pretty minor and he only got 6 months but I think it is quite reasonable that there are legal regulations around techniques like cloning since the science is quite new and all the implications are not yet fully worked out..
Because we've got no idea how it could effect (Score:2)
the general population. And our tech isn't anywhere near ready to tell.
Selective breeding is relatively safe, but we still manage to fuck things up periodically and we've lost a few species that way.
Now take that and speed it up by about 1000% and you're just asking for trouble. It'd be easy to have a bunch of traits that make the sheep very profitable in the short term and then blow up in our faces by killing them in mass.
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You don't need a T-Rex to terrorise a small farm & the surrounding area. Sheep'll do just fine if you clone 'em right: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_(2006_New_Zealand_film)
Such a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
In 1970s and prior, terrestrial rabies was confined to Florida and the deep southern states. In 1977 hunters in VA started importing Florida raccoons for hunting. All that east coast rabies nowadays is descended from those imported raccoons.
One wonders what could be transmitting around with these critters and what we'll all be looking back at Montana as the origin of in a decade or two?
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It's unlikely that the offspring harbor any pathogen not already endemic in native sheep since the cloned embryo was implanted in a native species. Beyond the original clone, unlike when breeding pairs of non-native animals are brought in, all of the offspring are hybrids. I understand why these regulations need to be enforced. But this case doesn't seem to be that serious. We might even decide that the hybrid offspring make better farm animals.
What a shock. Human garbage doesn't respect life. (Score:2)
You run across people like this sometimes. They'll kick their dog in front of children, then tell you how "cruel" it is that they have to pay taxes.
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You mean 2 faced people? Pot, meet kettle. I guarantee that you, like every one of us, does significant things which disrespect life. Taking driving for example - significant impact on other creatures, major impact on human youth too.
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He doesn't drive or do anything harmful to the environment. In fact, he decided early on it was so important to have no impact on the world he has never left his mother's womb.
When his little hands get tired reaching out between her legs for the keyboard, she types for him.
theyre coming to take jobs (Score:2)
These illegal foreign sheep are coming to take the jobs of American sheep! Whats next?
Big game sheep hunting? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know some hunters will shoot at anything on four legs, but sheep? Something about that doesn't seem sporting at all; that'd be like hunting cattle. If that's the level of someone's hunting skills they should pick up a different hobby and stick to the grocery store.
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These sheep have head mounted lasers and camouflaged wool.
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Marco Polo argali sheep look very similar to North America's bighorn sheep, with the wrap-around horns. I imagine most of the offspring went to hunting ranches where well heeled trophy "hunters" could collect an apparent trophy without having to win a permit to hunt a real bighorn sheep. Not many bighorn permits are issued and most are by lottery.
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But the imagine the huge white "dandelion" puff when scoring a direct hit.
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Its for the big horns you get to mount on the wall.
The IMPORTANT question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok..so the important question is...HOW DOES IT TASTE?!?!?!
Re:The IMPORTANT question is... Why New York? (Score:2)
The important question is why NY? They just killed a squirrel and a raccoon that were indigenous to the area. Now they import a freakishly large sheep?
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> The important question is why NY? They just killed a squirrel and a raccoon that were indigenous to the area. Now they import a freakishly large sheep?
Sheep of unusual size? I don't believe they exist.
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If they're cloning endangered sheep its probably more for the wool than the meat.
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Like sheep. Being a cloned sheep doesn't change the taste from the original. It's the same proteins.
Re: The IMPORTANT question is... (Score:2)
Must you insult her name? Attacking policy is fine, but the personal attacks are degrading any ability to have dialog in our politics.
Re: The IMPORTANT question is... (Score:2)
WILL IT BLEND?