Mutant Chickens Breath Underwater
01/09/1999 . Source: Jessica Martin 

Japanese scientists at the Mikoniko Research Institute in Japan have successfully finished their initial trials aimed at genetically engineering chickens capable of breathing under water.

They are aiming to solve one of Japan's major problems - the land of the rising sun's lack of arable farming land.

It is no coincidence that over 60% of the Japanese population's protein intake come from fish. It's all they have to eat!

Chicken is a favourite meat among the Japanese but the bulk of their meat is imported from China and Hong Kong at a very high cost to the economy (the Japanese authorities are renowned for their dislike for foreign imports).

Lead scientist Jie Yang has expressed satisfaction with the exploratory stages of the project, in which gill cells were successfully transferred into newly born chicks which have now matured with no harmful side effects.

Their main challenge is to now work on disabling the lungs in parallel with boosting the chickens' underwater respiratory system.

Jie Yang said: "The first aqua-chickens will probably be closer to mammals such as whales rather than true fish. They will need to surface regularly for oxygen."

This is an exciting project and the rapidly evolving frontier of bio-science, cloning and genetic engineering is now allowing us to help humanity in ways that would have been impossible just two years ago."

This project will be of substantial benefit not just to Japan, but to third world countries with substantial coastlines such as Africa, India and South America."

Aqua-chickens will need to be raised in offshore fish farms however, rather than being released into the wild, so I doubt they will allow us to repopulate the ocean with a new species to help minimise the impact of fish stock depletion."