I'm sure many of you have heard of Dolly the cloned sheep. I wasn't able to see her the last time round, because apparently Dolly had gone on holiday and had just come back from abroad after being gawked at by some foreigners in goodness knows where.
Anyway, now Dolly is back. I almost didn't see her because she was hidden amongst all those scientic contraptions in some science room in the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh but a glimpse of her unmistakable white (ok, maybe not so white, but you get my point) coat pointed me in the right direction.
Frankly, yes. Dolly looks just like any other white sheep that you might see in the meadows and that's just putting it plainly. Obviously, she should look like a sheep. She's supposed to be cloned from one. Can't imagine a cloned sheep looking like anything else BUT a sheep.
Still, if she's supposed to be cloned, then she should look identical or at least similar to the sheep she was cloned from, right? The problem is, we don't know what the sheep she was cloned from looked like. It wasn't taxidermied and exhibited next to Dolly, so since there is nothing to compare, we have absolutely no idea just how similar she looks to her original.
In essence, we have no visual proof other than what the scientists are telling us. So for all we know, Dolly could jolly well be the product of artificial insemination. Then again, all sheep look the same, so even if she looks exactly like her original, we would probably have no idea whether she looks different or not either.
So I guess we'll just have believe the scientists who tell us she was a clone, even though I harbour doubts.
Afterall, if she was really a clone, then we ought to be able to reproduce another Dolly right? So what's taking so long to do so?
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