Sunday, May 30, 2010

Attack of the Clones!

So at the store that I work at we have a Trivia Board set up for the customers to guess while they are waiting in the store. Kind of a fun thing we like to do. One of the questions we put up the other day was "What was the first animal to be successfully cloned?" Now almost every single person who guesses is so sure of themselves that the answer is a sheep and they are WRONG.

I'm sorry the correct answer is Jango Fett...

Now I understand why people are guessing a sheep because as most of us know the sheep, Dolly, was the first mammal to be successfully cloned and it was a huge deal! I remember seeing Dolly all over the place in the newspapers and Time magazine and the like. So yes, I see where they are getting that answer from. But when I tell them that the first animal to be cloned was actually a tadpole some of them don't believe me at all. Yes a tadpole. I know it sounds weird but it's true, look it up. What angers me is when people get upset that sheep is not the right answer. This is where, to me at least, I think common sense should kind of kick in...

If you were a scientist in charge of cloning wouldn't it be wise to start small and work your way up? I mean, that seems most logical to me. I highly doubt that one day at the Roslin Institute in Scotland the scientists were sitting there and thought "OK, time to clone something! Let's start with a sheep!" I seriously doubt it. I mean, what kind of sense does that make unless you were either trying to move this project really fast or just makes things that much more difficult on yourself.

Maybe it's just me...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

A tadpole is not an animal, you should phrase the question as what was the first "thing" cloned.
Sheep would be correct as far as the first "animal"

Seantaku said...

A tadpole isn't an animal? What is it?

bluedrakon said...

that is so funny as I first thought sheep as well. Last time I checked a tadpole was an animal - maybe not a full grown animal, but still.

Seantaku said...

It's definitely an animal, there's no question. lol. The infant stage of a frog is still a frog, therefore an animal. That's like saying a baby is not a human.