Carnivorous Nights by Margaret Mittelbach Read Free Book Online Page B

have heard our stream-of-consciousness, horror-movie-driven thoughts. His goals were conservation, preservation, and of course knowledge. Still, he recognized the cloning project had a metaphysical dimension.
    Even if his team got the DNA perfectly right (no tweaking, no manipulation, a perfect twin), the question remained: Is DNA what truly makes a species or an individual animal?
    “It depends on what a thylacine is, doesn't it?” Don said. “Is theessence of that animal its genetic component, or does it include its behavior and so forth?” Maybe thylacines were passing down information from generation to generation, along with their genes, over tens of thousands of years. Maybe hunting techniques and vocalizations were learned, not innate. Assuming the thylacine clone had a place to live, how would it know what to do?
    And what about a place to live? The obvious choice would be to release the tiger clones into protected habitat in Tasmania. David Brower, the longtime director of the Sierra Club, once said, “Wild species are 2 percent flesh and bone and 98 percent place.” Outside its true habitat, the thylacine clone would be nothing but a glorified lab rat. Don agreed. “We want to use this project to reinforce the importance of conserving habitat in Australia. Whatever we'll spend in the lab, we'll need to spend ten times that on habitat protection. We've spoken to the parks and wildlife people in Tasmania, who inform us that there
is
a lot of suitable habitat down there.”
    There was just one small problem with that idea. At present, Tasmania does not permit the use of genetically modified crops, let alone the release of genetically modified animals.
    Don was undaunted. “There's also habitat that would be suitable in other areas of the country,” he said. In other words, reintroducing the thylacine onto the Australian mainland was a possibility.
    “Near Sydney?”
    “Well, the Blue Mountains would be fine.”
    “Maybe they could move in with the flying foxes in the botanical gardens,” Alexis chimed in. Alexis was more comfortable with blurring boundaries than most people. In one of his paintings,
Rat Evolution
, an everyday rat was transformed over a series of three mutations into a freakish species of the future, a furless, kangaroo-like beast with armor-plated hindquarters and six-inch-long incisors. Perhaps the Evolutionary Biology Unit would want to look into making those superpowered dingofighting tigers after all.
    We only had one more question: “Do you think there's any possibility that the tiger isn't extinct?”
    Karen laughed. “Some people still swear they see them.”
    Don took it more seriously.
    “I'm presuming it's extinct,” he said carefully.
    “What about the people who believe the tiger's still out there?”
    He paused. “Let's hope it is.”
    We knew he didn't believe it for a second. But it was a happy thought. If nothing else, it would make his job a whole lot easier.

4. THE EXTINCTION CABINET

    B efore we met Don Colgan, we had been pondering the nature of life. Now we were wondering, what exactly was death? Such thoughts were driven sharply to the surface as Don led us through the museum's osteology exhibit. In it were scores of articulated skeletons, their bones blanched white. The sinuous vertebrae of a python were poised to strike, a furless fur seal hung from the ceiling suspended by wires, and a swan posed with its featherless wings outstretched. Beneatha sampler that read “Home Sweet Home,” a human skeleton sat in a rocking chair powered by an invisible motor.
    Next to the scrawny remains of a rat darting into a mouse hole, a hidden door led to the museum's basement collections. We walked down a steep staircase and into a hallway, passing a metal cart crammed with jars containing pickled bats and taxidermies of an echidna and mountain brushtail possum. The whole area smelled funereal, a combination of mothballs, alcohol, and formaldehyde used to preserve the old