Thursday, April 17, 2008

Ferrets on a prairie

If you'd like to read more about the ongoing black-footed ferret recovery program there is a nice website at www.blackfootedferret.org. There are some interesting approaches to conserving the genetic diversity. Instead of the traditional stud book that recorded matings and attempted to cross as widely as possible we now have:

One high priority for protecting genetic diversity was to establish a "Black-footed Ferret Genome Resource Bank", a frozen repository of sperm from the most genetically valuable males.

What do you think they mean by 'genetically valuable' here?

The video is not especially informative but does give a nice idea of what the breeding facility looks like, and you do get to see a lot of ferrets.......

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