Burpless Cows

Scientists at the University of Aberdeen are hoping to use selective breeding to breed burpless cows. Or, at least, cows that burp less often than average. This is possible because apparently there's natural variation in the frequency with which cows burp. Some burp all the time, and others not so much. So if you keep selecting the less burpy ones, eventually you'll produce a herd of burp-free bovines.

This is desirable — so much so that the EU is willing to put up €7.7 million in funding for the research — because it's the cow's belches that contain the atmosphere-warming methane. So the plan is that burpless cows will help save us from the spectre of global warming.
     Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 07, 2013
     Category: Science | Cows





Comments
I thought most of that problematic methane gas was produced from the other end of the cow! :lol: :coolhmm:
Posted by Tyrusguy on 06/07/13 at 09:35 AM
Let's see if I have this straight ...

Most environmentalist watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) rail and moan about the dangers of Genetically Modified Organisms and label them "Frankenfood", even though all organisms domesticated by humans for the food supply are "genetically modified." Here comes the same idea of genetic modification since selective breeding is genetic modification, just in a slower form. I assume that these cattle will eventually be slaughtered and eaten.

It seems like putting a couple of bugs in a jar and then shaking it. Let the infighting begin!
Posted by KDP on 06/07/13 at 12:25 PM
@Tyrus: You're attempting, my friend, to use logic against a bureaucratic body that declared carrots as fruit!

@KDP: Read above.

€7.7 to a bona fide research facility is nothing! I watched them give over €200,000 to some idiot to write a program that tracked exchange rates of foreign currencies who kept calling me to help him out! If you write pretty proposals and and offer a few, ah....., incentives you, too, can get a grant to study how to breed orange slugs by cross breeding those red and yellow ones mentioned in an earlier thread.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 06/07/13 at 01:18 PM
Expat, it isn't so much trying to understand the logic as the fun of watching the wackos fight among themselves when it doesn't occur to them that the goals are mutually unobtainable.
Posted by KDP on 06/07/13 at 02:35 PM
It also occurred to me the the EU is, most likely, funding studies to trap the methane from cows and critters for some domestic use or other.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 06/07/13 at 11:56 PM
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