Elizabeth Ann is one-of-a-kind, sort of. The 2-month-old black-footed ferret is the first member of an endangered species to be cloned. Black-footed ferrets were thought to be extinct in the U.S. decades ago, but a small population was discovered in 1981 and scientists helped them re-populate. The group is still endangered, however, and Elizabeth Ann, who resides at a Fish and Wildlife facility in Fort Collins, Colorado, is a clone of a ferret named Willa whose DNA was frozen in 1998. Elizabeth Ann’s keepers report she is feisty, as is typical of her species. “You might have been handling a black-footed ferret kit and then they try to take your finger off the next day,” Peter Gober, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said. “She’s holding her own.”
Read it at The Associated Press
