TWIN SHEEP
RESEARCH IN AMERICA. Scientists, taking preposterous liberties with the animal kingdom, have achieved feats in a few generations that would have taken ordinary evolutionary processes tens of thousands of yeaA, says an American exchange). One of these experimental ventures is now drawing near a close. For sheer audacity it has few equals. From a scientific point of view, it is one of the fine, unsung research stories of our day. The aim is to create a breed of sheep which will normally produce twins and be capable of sustaining their lives until they are old enough to be weaned. It’s a story of work that began 49 years ago on a bleak Nova Scotian hillside under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; and that is nearing completion today in a prim little frame building at the University of New Hampshire. U.S.A. During the summer of 1886, Dr Bell took his family to Baddeck, Nova Scotia, for peace and seclusion. To supply his children with some amusement, Bell bought a sheep which he intended to sell in the autumn when they returned to Washington. But the children would not hear of selling their pet, and the animal was boarded with a farmer for the winter. x
When the family returned the following spring there were two sheep —the original and a lamb born in the spring. For the children it was a delightful surprise. The inventor had a different reaction. Why only one baby? A pig produced a dozen or so young at one time, and half a dozen kittens or pups often arrived together. So why only one lamb. The great inventor looked at his Nova Scotian neighbours. . They were undeniably' poor. They had to subsist largely on the earning from their flocks of sheep. If one could only induce those sheep to have twins most of the time, wouldn’t one proportionately increase the income of the Nova Scotians?
Bell began collecting sheep facts. One point stood out particularly. Sheep, as a rule, had only two functional nipples—two that would supply milk to the young. That militated against production of a race of normally twin-bearing animals.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1940, Page 9
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362TWIN SHEEP Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1940, Page 9
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