Buffalo might have been driven almost to extinction by overeager
Americans, but now we have a chance to redeem ourselves—by
genetically engineering new ones. Thanks to a team of scientists
in India, we can add buffalo to the list of animals that have
been cloned—including a camel, a wolf and, of course, the
legendary sheep. Scientists at India’s National Dairy Research
Institute, in the Indian state of Haryana, produced the first
cloned buffalo back in February, using DNA from the ear of an
adult female—though unfortunately, it died of pneumonia soon
after its birth. Now, they’ve tried again, resulting in a
95-pound female calf named Garima. She got her start from fetal
tissue, according to a report released yesterday from India’s
National Dairy Research Institute. The team also used a cloning
technique that allowed them to choose the gender of the calf.
Scientists say that being able to clone buffaloes could make it
easier to breed “elite” animals; in other words, they could
increase the number of animals wi