Glow-in-the-dark monkey magic!
Japanese scientists have been working on creating small monkeys which glow in the dark.
What the? This is the kind of weird science I can really get behind.
I mean monkeys are one of my favorite animals, but I always did think they were too hard to spot in the dark.
Well I can now rest easy.
In the past scientists have created monkeys that could glow under ultraviolet light. But these were just one-offs.
Now they have meddled around with genes to ensure the primates pass down this eye-catching ability to their offspring.
Researchers managed this feat using a protein normally found in jellyfish.
The marmosets have also been made a lot shorter.
Why? Well I'm afraid this is to make them more portable and so can be send to other labs for experimentation.
Maybe working on these chimps will help us find cures for Parkinson's or other diseases, but it still feels this story ends on somewhat of a sour note.
Weird Science Factoid: Turtles and sea cucumbers can breathe through their 'behinds'. No sniggering at the back!
Join the Weird Science Facebook group here, or follow us on Twitter here or by searching for weirdsciblog.
Want to be sent the 'best' of the Weird Sci Blog every month? Then sign up for Weird News - a newsletter containing more info about the subjects we cover, plus some extra stuff that didn't make the blog. Interested? Subscribe by e-mailing wscience@me.com with the title 'count me in' and we'll do the rest.
Older/Newer
2 Comments
Authors
Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
Wow, that's quite something. I wonder why they did that experiment though.
scholarships for cosmetology school
Oh, my that's great. Genetic engineering of the closest thing to me