Thursday, June 05, 2003

This bird has teeth.

quand les poules auront des dents

French scientists have managed to reawaken a gene that has remained dormant in birds since the last of the descendants of the Archaeopteryx died out 70 million years ago: they have grown chickens with teeth. Dr Josaine Fontaine-Perus and Prof. Paul Sharpe discovered the DNA that can trigger tooth and hair follicle growth, and they hope to apply similar techniques to humans, for example, by developing drugs that can reverse balding.

Or: they could grow lots of birds with teeth, like ravens, puffins, or larks (could a lark with teeth form phonemes? Would a puffin be goofy, a raven even more sinister and symbolic?). If herring gulls had teeth it would all be over: cities would be picked clean, our bones left to bake in the sun, empty buildings converted into nesting colonies in sprawling, terrifying herring gull city states (herring gull holocaust). (I like to keep these things in perspective.)