A frozen zoo is a storage facility in which genetic materials taken from animals (e.g. DNA, sperm, eggs, and embryos) are gathered and thereafter stored at very low temperatures for optimal preservation over a long period (see cryopreservation). Some facilities also collect and cryopreserve plant material (usually seeds).
Zoos such as the San Diego Zoo and research programs such as the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species cryopreserve genetic material in order to protect the diversity of the gene pool of endangered species, or to provide for a prospective reintroduction of such extinct species as the Tasmanian Tiger and the Mammoth.
Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Conservation Research has been freezing biological materials from animals and plants in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) since 1976. They currently store a collection of 8,400 samples from over 800 species and subspecies. Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Conservation Research has acted as a forbearer to similar projects at other zoos in the United States and Europe including the Frozen Ark Project. However, there are still less than a dozen frozen zoos worldwide.
At the United Arab Emirates Breeding Centre for Endangered Arabian Wildlife (BCEAW), Sharjah, the embryos stored include the extremely endangered Gordon’s wildcat (Felis silvestris gordoni) and the Arabian leopard (Panthera pardus nimr) (of which there are only 50 in the wild).
Read more about Frozen Zoo: Creating A Frozen Zoo, The Future of Frozen Genetic Material
Famous quotes containing the words frozen and/or zoo:
“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men’s affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)