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Jan 3, 2011

This Mouse Knows How to Tweet

I'm not even talking about Twitter. Thanks to the wonderful world of genetic engineering (which is the greatest thing ever), this mouse no longer squeaks. It tweets. Yes, like a bird.

The tweeting ability of the mouse actually came about by accident. Sort of. As AFP tells it, scientists at the University of Osaka were working on a study to see how genetic mutation facilitates evolution. So after breeding genetically modified mice that were prone to copy DNA wrong, they happened upon one mouse that could unexpectedly tweet. They've since bred over a hundred of these "singing mice."

Scientists are especially intrigued by this, because tweeting among birds functions as a low-level language for them. So they believe these noises from the tweeting mouse aren't entirely as random as the normal squeak. And they're also curious how it will affect normal, non-tweeting mice exposed to these sounds.

10 comments:

Les said...

If they can talk, they can organise. If they can organise, they can mobilise against us. When will we learn never to play god?

But in all seriousness, this is really cool.

Major Mack said...

exciting ! :)

Natália said...

Nice mouse!

Guy Movie Blogger said...

I bet they can sing better than Justin Bieber.

Pawawanpi said...

Tweeting mouse just sounds so awesome.

mrecan said...

wow if this can be used for humans, it will be even more awesome.

Suciô Sanchez said...

Now they just need to breed them to be canary yellow.

MArk said...

they can notify me when they make it taste like chicken

Monster Madness said...

Lol, I wonder what other stuff the future will bring xD

Anonymous said...

i admit i thought of twitter when i read the headline..