Scientists Successfully Clone First U.S. Endangered Animal Species

Scientists have successfully cloned the first U.S. endangered animal species, a black-footed ferret. They duplicated it from the genes of an animal that died over 30 years ago.

The slinky predator named Elizabeth Ann, born December 10, 2020, and announced on Thursday, is a cute button. However, unlike the domestic ferret foster mom who carried her into the world, Elizabeth is a wild heart.

‘’You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the very next day. She’s holding her own,’’ U.S. Fish and Wildlife service black-footed ferret recovery coordinator Pete Gober said on Thursday.

Elizabeth Ann was born and is being raised at a Fish and Wildlife Service black-footed ferret breeding facility in Colorado. She is also a genic copy of a ferret named Willa who died in 1988 and her remains were frozen in the early days of DNA technology.

Cloning technology could see a number of extinct species returning on the scene, for example, the passenger pigeon. For now, the technique holds promise for helping endangered animal species including a Mongolian wild horse that came back into existence last summer in a Texas facility.

Elizabeth Ann and future clones of Willa will form a new line of black-footed ferrets according to Gober; the ferrets will remain in Fort Collins for study purposes. There are no plans to release them into the wild.

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