The sight of newborns is a joyful experience and American researchers at Washington DC’s Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI) had the joy of their lives when a cloned black-footed birth successfully gave birth to two ferrets — a male and a female offspring.
Antonia, the black-footed ferret mother who was cloned using the genetic material of a ferret named Willa collected from the wild in 1988, gave birth to three kits, one of which failed to survive.
However, the successful birth of the two ferrets is a milestone moment for the scientific community.
It is because they are classified as an endangered species and the experiment provides substantial hope about similar efforts yielding results that might help in the revival of the populations of other endangered species.
“The successful breeding and subsequent birth of Antonia's kits marks a major milestone in endangered species conservation,” Paul Marinari, senior curator at the Smithsonian's NZCBI, said in a statement.
Black-footed ferrets are one of the most threatened mammals in North America with just 370 of them estimated to be left in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
The abysmally low population of these ferrets led some experts to believe that their species went extinct by the 1980s. However, the re-discovery of these ferrets in Wyoming in 1981 was met with a collective sigh of relief by conservation experts and wildlife enthusiasts.
It is believed that the loss of natural habitat and rise in the incidence of diseases are the biggest reasons behind the decline in their population. The US Fish and Wildlife Service also associates ‘genetic challenges’ to problems faced by experts in the revival of the population of these last remaining ferrets.
In the case of Anatonia, these genetic challenges were overcome as Willa, from whom Antonia was cloned, provided the immaculate set of genetic material that helped her give birth to the young ones.
Willa’s genes contained “three times the genetic diversity seen in the current population of black-footed ferrets all of which (except the three clones and new offspring) are descended from just seven surviving individuals,” the agency’s press statement noted.
With the two infant ferrets having been born successfully, the new genetic composition of these young ones can help in the amplification of genetic diversity in the species’ gene pool. This can contribute to a long-term recovery of the endangered animal.
Meanwhile, the newborns and their mother are being kept under observation in the zoo for further research.