Saving body fluids from saving endangered species?

Question

This maybe kinda gross or whatever but why don't we save sperm/seaman from endangered species.So then if the animals start to disappear they/us can in plant the females with what we have frozen?just kinda curious about that after meeting jeff corwin and him talking about seeing the last bird of his bread on earth.

Answer 1

There are a few seed banks located throughout the world to preserve the biodiversity of plants.  They are EXTREMELY useful.  Most of our food crops are very genetically uniform.  But even at extremely low storage temperatures, the seeds need to be planted and then harvested, and then refrozen.  The shelf life is not forever.  I assume that the shelf live of frozen tissue samples would not be as long as seeds.  So you'd probably have to clone rare animals over and over and then extract fresh DNA.  The better answer maybe to do  a complete DNA sequence and store the info electronically.  Then at a future date (because we can't do it now) take the data and recreate the animal.  p.s.  would you like to volunteer to get a sperm sample from a blue whale?

Answer 2

thats a good question, probably too political to answer.

Answer 3

Excellent idea. We go with it starting tomorrow.

Answer 4

Sperm and egg banks are already saved as well as tissue samples(DNA).  I don't know if anyone has considered all species or if there is one bank for all endangered species..  There are new species still being discovered.