Nature holds all sorts of wonders in her oversized pockets. And we can't get enough. Who doesn't love a good story about the giant squid wrapping its tenticular self around a hapless fishing vessel? Or a documentary on the alien behaviours of pandas. Or a snapshot of a toad the size of a small dog?
Just look at him. He needs a name. Let's call him Johann.
Read about him here.
Johann was discovered in a place called Darwin, Australia. The name conjures images of the natural imperative, and evolution, and the survival of the fittest. Which made me reflect.
We fool with things. Cross this, pluck that, design our natural environments at increasingly dizzying rates, for increasingly incredible results. Three years ago, the world began to wake up to the clear and present possibility of xenotransplantation - a branch of biotechnology that seeks to grow transgenic organs in host animals (like pigs) for use as human donor organs. And now we have sheep that are 15% related to us.
We've created chimera before. It's more than theoretically possible, it's only a question of the theoretical outcomes of doing it. And through the morass of bioethical questions, I have to wonder - is our natural aptitude to do this simply another form of evolution? Is Sheepperson any less a natural curiosity than Johann? When does it cease to be a natural statement?
Read about the sheepsis here.
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