Baby Sharks Birthed in Artificial Uterus

[n2doc]

By Danielle Venton September 29, 2011 | 1:40 pm | Categories: Animals

An artificial uterus, designed to give live birth to sharks, rests in the lab of the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, in New South Wales. It’s an atypical maternity ward.

The uterus, a series of tanks, tubes and fluid-exchange systems, is a proof-of-concept for now. But one day it could boost the dwindling numbers of the grey nurse shark.

Nick Otway, a fisheries biologist, was charged with devising a plan to breed this threatened shark with a bizarre reproductive cycle. In a paper published in Zoo Biology, Sept. 8, he and his colleague Megan Ellis, report they have done just that.

Grey nurse sharks, known as sand tiger sharks in the United States, are regionally endangered off the east coast of Australia, and listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Though not intentionally targeted by commercial and recreational fishing, many are caught and die by accident, said Otway. And the death of even one is a huge loss, since babies are so hard to come by.

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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/artificial-shark-uterus/

[MADem]

1. Sharks are just the starting point. This may be how we'll do it in future...nt