Seed Media Group

Zooillogix

Don't Stick Your Fingers in the Cage

Search this blog

Vote for Zooillogix

icanhasNOTHING on Zooillogix! Help us crush mentally handicapped cats and overloads of baby bunnies with your vote by clicking below.

Bleiman Brothers Profile

isopod%201.jpg
In the wild, Andrew feeds on fish, sponges, small crustaceans, nematode worms and protozoans.

javanensis.GIF
Benny's diet is very specialized, consisting mainly of the interior of Ramy nuts, nectar from the Traveller's Palm tree, some fungi and insect grubs. He is also known to raid coconut plantations, and has been seen eating lychees and mangoes, which are also plantation crops.

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Blogroll



Look How Important We Are


Nature Blog Network

View blog authority

Add to Technorati Favorites



Science Blogs - Blog Catalog Blog Directory

Read the super-informative Interview with the Bleiman Brothers

World's Largest Zoo and Shot Glass Collection


Now accepting donations in exchange for recognition and fame on Zooillogix!

baton%20rouge%20zoo%20shotglass%20resized.jpg
Currently Featured: Baton Rouge Zoo generously donated by a ScienceBlogs reader / fellow shot glass collector. A noble hobby.

The List:
Adventure Aquarium
Baton Rouge Zoo
Bronx Zoo
Brookfield Zoo
Cincinnati Zoo
Cleveland Metroparks Zoo
Florida Aquarium
Georgia Aquarium
Knoxville Zoo
Lincoln Park Zoo
Maritime Center in Norwalk, CT
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Mystic Aquarium
New England Aquarium
New York Aquarium
Newport Aquarium
Philadelphia Zoo
Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies
San Diego Zoo
Sea World San Diego
Shedd Aquarium
Smithsonian National Zoo
South Carolina Aquarium
Tennessee Aquarium
Feed me Seymour!

« Mythical Monster Sloth, the Mapinguary! | Main | Jumping Spider Mating Dance »

Scientists Create Twelve-Headed Jellyfish: "Because We Could"

Category: genetic modificationsjellyfishmonster
Posted on: August 2, 2007 3:24 PM, by ableiman

Scientists have created a jellyfish with twelve heads in a lab at Hanover University of Veterinary Medicine in Germany. Bernd Schierwater and colleague Wolfgang Jakob (or "God" as they like to collectively call themselves) claim to have created the freakish monstrosity to study how colonies of multiheaded organisms develop in nature. By manipulating certain Cnox genes, a specific kind of gene which helps control how the bodies of jellyfish embryos form, Schierwater and Jakob caused the embryo to develop in strange ways. Simply by inhibiting the Cnox-2 gene, up to twelve heads would form. The jellyfish they used is called a European hydromedusa (Eleutheria dichotoma) and can be found in the waters off of France.

This mutant jelly only has two heads.

Jellyfish are very similar to certain kinds of coral, which display many-headedness naturally. Schierwater believes that perhaps somewhere down the evolutionary chain a common ancestor of both jellyfish and coral might have had certain Cnox genes inhibited causing to to grow many heads, and eventually lead to the coral reefs which now exist in every ocean on the Earth.

When asked what the chances were the that twelve-headed jellyfish would break out of its enclosure and go on a muderous rampage, before finally being frozen by NATO forces and then shattered into a million tiny shards, Schierwater put the chances at around "50-50."

Not all genetically modified critters are unpleasing to the human eye...

Post a Comment

(Email is required for authentication purposes only. Comments are moderated for spam, your comment may not appear immediately. Thanks for waiting.)





Having problems commenting? (UPDATED)

Blogs in the Network

Advertisement

Top Five: Most German

Search All Blogs