I Dreamed Of Dinosaurs

So this guy, Hans Larsson, at the McGill University in Montreal is saying he can make dinosaurs out of chickens. After all, the prevailing theory is that dinos evolved into birds, right? So that shouldn’t be too hard to do… outside of the actual science of the thing, I mean.

But he says he can do it. Turn on one gene, turn off another, introduce a certain hormone at a certain time, etc. Sounds pretty simple to me. (You know, once you have the science worked out.) I think he can do it, too. (Or already has, but not well enough to announce it to the world.)


Come on. You know scientists were working on this stuff before Michael Crichton ever even thought of Jurassic Park. You know scientists are working on it now. Should they be working on it? I don’t know. You know I’m okay with science for science’s sake most of the time. And I doubt there will ever be a Jurassic Park. So it’s not that that gives me pause.

What bothers me is… what are we going to do with these dinos we create? We can study their physiology. Or raise them and study their behavior. Or study the evolution (de-evolution?) of animals. But would we really be doing that?


Wouldn’t we, in fact, be studying an animal that may be physiologically similar to a dinosaur? Dino innards are pretty scarce, folks. Who knows if what we make would be a dino or a chicken that is similar to a dino? Same with behavior. If it’s not a dino, is it behaving like a dino? Or a genetically altered chicken? Especially if we do not recreate its environment and just expect to observe the way it acts in a controlled environment of our creation.

Think of the tigers in the zoo. Their habitat has a stream, foliage, etc., like in the wild. But is that how a tiger acts in the wild?

And doesn’t the whole observation depend on whether or not an animal’s behavior is innate or learned? Wouldn’t a dinosaur nee’ chicken act more like whatever it is raised to act like? Or would we just keep them in a separate environment and see how they acted with no animal to teach it what kind of animal it should be?

And evolution depends on so many factors. Just think of how humans would have evolved if our shoes were shaped like gloves! (Just kidding.)

Anyway, so the question is: Should we make chickenosaurs? It’s still interesting and has the potential to teach us (if nothing else, then to teach us what possibilities arise by altering an animal’s—or a person’s—genes). But let’s call it what it is… an experiment in gene manipulation for the sake of gene manipulation. We’re trying to prove we can make an animal from another different, but similar animal. Let’s not try to convince people we’re trying to prove something about dinosaurs.

Oh, and I really did dream of dinosaurs the other night. I dreamed about a scientist who was trying to genetically create dinosaurs. She ended up creating a human/dino hybrid. And it proved to be self-aware.

My final thought was, “Damn it. So now I can’t kill it.”