Small Animals

[PhelixBandaza]

Me and my friend recently came up with an idea of somehow creating tiny animals. For example, an elephant that could fit in the palm of your hand. We feel like this would be a really popular craze and make us a lot of money. I know that I would buy several of them for sure. We figure there has to be a way to do this possibly through cloning. With science as advanced as it is today I find it hard to believe this hasn't been done already. This thread is not a joke and I'm very interested in what your opinions are on the subject.

[CharonY]

To try to obtain this by genetic manipulation is still scifi. Breeding has a better track record. Of course certain things are just physiologically not possible (i.e. you cannot simply scale body plans in size and assume it will work).

[ewmon]

I'm just waiting for someone to develop kittens and puppies that never grow up! Imagine having a cute little kitten or puppy for a dozen years? Peter Pan for animals.

[PhelixBandaza]

That would be pretty awesome. I was thinking about how sweet it would be having like a little rhino run across my desk while I was in class and just watch him and maybe feed him some lettuce.

[Mr Skeptic]

Me and my friend recently came up with an idea of somehow creating tiny animals. For example, an elephant that could fit in the palm of your hand.

 

It would likely die of hypothermia.

[CharonY]

It probably would not be able to move (where is Mokele, he knows way more about muscles than me). In any case this belongs to speculation.

[the tree]

(i.e. you cannot simply scale body plans in size and assume it will work).

This is particularly important, but perhaps not entirely obvious.

 

The theoretical reason is that different aspects of shape respond to scale differently. For instance: while volume increases cubically, surface area only increases quadratically. So a significant drop in volume may represent only a small drop in surface area.

[Moontanman]

I'm just waiting for someone to develop kittens and puppies that never grow up! Imagine having a cute little kitten or puppy for a dozen years? Peter Pan for animals.

 

hmmmm puppies forever, puddles and poop everywhere all the time, never ending.... i think I'll stick with my adult basset hounds, it too much time and effort to house train them.

 

I agree skeptic, they would freeze to death, along with size they would need some serious metabolic manipulation as well. However I suspect scaling animals down would be easier than scaling them up.

[Moontanman]

Actually i am running an experiment along those lines, i ma attempting to grow miniature Paddlefish Polydon spatula. the fist achieves 5 feet in the wild i have several i am trying to stunt

[skyhook]

It may be possible to dwarf animals, but to dwarf a rhino is a lot more difficult than the usual pets. Because it is protected species, and it is hard to get stocks.

I think there are rabbit breeds that are quite small size, Hamsters, and mice have small breeds too.I don't remember seeing them 20 yrs ago, so these could be quite new. dogs and ponies have miniatures too.

It is selective breeding or artificially manipulating the genes of the animals in the labs.

The aquarium trade have created many dwarf ornamental fishes. Not really dwarf but the body of the fish is shortened, which creates a smaller rounder fish. Many species of tetras, and cichlids show very uniform rounded shapes in retailing shops. I've heard it is by using some chemicals, but I don't know how they do it. I kept bettas before, and there are breeds called giant bettas which are about 2-3 times larger than the original breeds. This is by selective breeding. It is generally quite sluggish compared to other breeds. boring fishes with high retailing price. However, all this fancy breeds seemed like gimmicks, and I lost interest. Breeding too many fishes made me think of the ethnics, and the money part.

Guppies and bettas are quite interesting subjects for learning about genetics.