BOMBS, BOOBS & BURGERS

Further to my post last week about how scientists had fully decoded the cow genome, a reader wrote in to pass along some juicy info on "Nazi super cows" (thanks Tom!). I've always been very interested in World War Two history, particularly the crazy Nazi occult stuff, but this is one bizarro story I'd never heard before.

It seems a British conservationist named Derek Gow recently imported 13 "Heck" cattle to his farm in Broadwoodwidger, about 370 kilometers west of London, from a nature preserve in Amsterdam. The cattle were reverse bred by a pair of brothers named Heck for Hermann Göring, the Nazi Luftwaffe commander, back during WWII in an attempt to recreate the auroch, a wild ox that went extinct some 400 years ago.

Where it gets even more interesting is that Göring wanted to bring the giant auroch, which stood two meters tall from its shoulders, back as part of a sort of Nazi theme park - he wanted to turn conquered Eastern Europe into a primeval Aryan wildnerness. What this means is that Michael Crichton ripped off the Nazis for the idea to Jurassic Park.

But seriously folks... as the various stories have pointed out, most scientists agree that it's impossible to recreate a species simply by breeding backward. Everybody knows you need cloning to do that!