Arizona Bans Human/Animal Hybrids

The seemingly mild-mannered southwestern state of Arizona has been in the news a lot lately, primarily for the drastic and somewhat surprising immigration law that recently passed, but the state is making waves in the scientific community now too.

(Image from: www.cftech.com)

The Arizona State Senate approved State Bill 1307, a bill that prohibits anyone in Arizona from “creating or attempting to create an in vitro human embryo by any means other than fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm.”

Scientists in Arizona are also prohibited from “transferring or attempting to transfer a human embryo into a nonhuman womb,” “transferring or attempting to transfer a nonhuman embryo into a human womb,” and “transporting or receiving for any purpose a human-animal hybrid.”

I, for one, find it a bit amusing that Arizona is outlawing the ability to create such organisms, but is also telling you that you can’t sell the ones you already have. Citizen, put down the creature from Next, it is illegal to buy or sell…(though it is also illegal for most people to buy or sell peyote in Arizona and that law hasn’t done a whole lot to stop them).

The official sci-fi term for pairing together DNA of two or more different species to create a hybrid organism is called splicing.

How are we going to find a girlfriend for Aquaman now?!

I think that a group of Arizona law makers happened to see the preview for Adrien Brody’s new movie “Splice” and just thought, “Oh shit, that can happen?! We best make a law against this AND QUICK!”

GeekOSystem.com also noted that “the wording of this law would also include human-alien couples trying to have children.” Don’t worry, Arizona is handling its alien problem through other legistlation. ZING!

You can find the text of the bill here, if you’re interested.

Also: Here’s the preview for that movie I was talking about.

There's a New T-Rex in Town

I usually believe the discovery of a new species to be cause for celebration.

I'm not so sure this time...

In fact, I’m fairly certain that I would have been happier never knowing this animal existed.

An enormous-toothed leech was pulled from the nose of a Peruvian girl bathing in the Upper Amazon river. The original report can be found in the journal PLoS ONE. The leech, named Tyrannobdella rex (translated to “tyrant leech king,”) is less than two inches long, but it supports “ferociously large teeth” in its single jaw.

(Image Credit: Phillips, et al. PLoS ONE 2010)

This find adds to some of the 700 known species of leeches, which exist worldwide. Because the range of the species is so vast, scientists believe that a common ancestor existed on Pangaea, the prehistoric super-continent that existed before modern continents broke apart. The Tyrannobdella rex find will lead to the revising of the leech family that feeds from the body orifices of mammals.

Anna Phillips, a graduate student and first author of the paper believes “the leech could feed on aquatic mammals, from their noses and mouths for example, where they could stay for weeks at a time.”

Mark Siddall, a collaborator on the story and curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History explained that they “…named it Tyrannobdella rex because of its enormous teeth.”

So use caution if you’re ever swimming in the Upper Amazon, you don’t want one of these toothy fiends to latch themselves up your nose.

Siddall added this amusing insight: “Besides, the earliest species in this family of these leeches no-doubt shared an environment with dinosaurs about 200 million years ago when some ancestor of our T. rex may have been up that other T. rex's nose.”

Not to insult the king of the dinosaurs, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather face him any day... at least he couldn't live undetected in my body for months at a time.

Plus, facing an extinct organism is far less frightening than finding out a toothy beast has taken hold of your sinuses for its dinner.