Animal Scientists Create Strange Looking Geeps

Animal scientists create strange looking geeps AG WORLD Ag World 12-3-18 What do you get when you cross a sheep with a goat? You get a strange-looking creature called a "Geep" with the face of a goat and the body of a sheep. Animal Scientist Dr. Gary Anderson and his colleagues at the University of California - Davis Campus (UCD) have created Geeps by taking cells from a 7-day old goat embryo and inserting them into a 7-day old sheep embryo, then implanting the joint embryo into a ewe's womb. The first sheep-goat Geep in the U.S., named Duchess, was born at UCD in the spring of 1985. Dr. Anderson, a reproductive physiologist, prefers to call her and similar other creations "Chimeras" rather than "Geeps." In Greek mythology, Chimeras were monstrous animals ù part serpent, part lion and part goat. Dr. Anderson's Chimeras, or Geeps, are neither horrible nor ugly and have no abnormal body parts or shapes. In the sheep-goat combination, the goat genetic traits are expressed by straight hair and dark face coloration. The most dominant sheep trait is an outer covering of curly wool. "The goal of our research is to learn more about preserving endangered animal species," notes Dr. Anderson. "The sheep/goat Chimera provides a model for studying the role of the placenta in preventing immume rejection of the fetus. This is important because researchers are interested in using domestic or non-endangered species as surrogate mothers to carry the embryos of endangered animals." Last June, in a test of her reproductive capabilities, Duchess acted as a surrogate mother and gave birth to a lamb whose fertilized egg had been transplanted into her womb by Dr. Anderson in February. Now mother and lamb share a pen. Dr. Anderson is seeking to breed Duchesss to a ram to prove that she ovulates and can produce her own young, which would be a lamb. Someday, he hopes to breed her to a buck to see if she produces goat eggs and can give birth to a kid. She will never be able to produce a Geep unless Dr. Anderson specifically places a Geep embryo in her womb. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Dr. Gary Anderson, Dept. of Animal Science, University of California, Davis, Cal. 95616 (ph 916 752-1250).

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