So this is my first biweekly (is that what it's called when you post something every other week?) post. I have two articles to show you. Here's number one!
Okay, so the first article is from Cornell University and it's about a half beagle, half retriever puppy named Klondike.
Klondike with owner Julie Jordan
While there doesn't seem to be anything special about him, Klondike is the first puppy to be born from a frozen embryo. His mother was artificially fertilized and Klondike, at that point just an embryo, was transplanted into Klondike's surrogate mother. While neither beagles or retrievers are anywhere near endangered, cryopreservation, or freezing fertilized eggs, can be used for the benefit of endangered canine species such as the Red Wolf.
"Oh yes, look at all this... snow..."
The Red Wolf is critically endangered. It used to live throughout the North American southeast, from the Gulf and Atlantic Coast north to central Pennsylvania and west out to Texas. Today, its range is limited to a very small portion of coastal North Carolina, shown here:
The Red Wolf's range is shaded in red.
Dogs can only get pregnant once or twice a year. Frozen embryos can be transferred to surrogate mothers and help with re-population. Link to the full article is here: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Feb13/Klondike.html
The other article comes from the Wildlife Conservation Society, and it talks about a new national park in the Republic of Congo, called Ntokou-Pikounta, that preserves a population of around 15,000 western lowland gorillas.
"You lookin' at me?"
The western lowland gorilla is critically endangered, and lives in the Congo River Basin, which contains parts of Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo, and Cameroon. Link to the full article is here: http://www.wcs.org/press/press-releases/ntokou-pikounda-national-park.aspx
