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:
“Others greater than I have already eulogized you, but none of them ever had the pleasure I had to feel the caresses of your warm, soft hands, to merit your warm embrace that was reserved only for us, to see your half-smile that always told us so much, that same smile which is no longer, frozen in the grave with you.”
—Noa Ben-Artzi Philosof (b. 1978)
“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)