back to article 'Supermodel' glow-in-the-dark pocket monkeys created

A team of crack Japanese boffins has at last achieved one of humanity's most important scientific goals - namely, the creation of small monkeys which glow green when exposed to ultraviolet light. Unsatisfactory one-off fluorescent primates had been created previously, but the new, cutting-edge fluoro-monkeys' abilities are …

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  1. Edward Miles
    Stop

    May I be the 1st/2nd/3rd to say...

    Without pictures, this artical is useless.

  2. Dave

    Ooh-err missus

    Eh luv, wanna see my pocket monkey?

  3. Liam Johnson

    pros and cons

    Bit more hairy than your average supermodel, but the pocket size feature might come in handy.

    How good are they at throwing stuff around?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Glow in the dark monkeys!!

    Cooool.. now if they get them to glow enough could they be used as energy efficient lighting ?

    Would love to see people driving round using monkeys as car headlights (bit of a bugger when one of them decides to peel a banana tho!).

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Monkey Butlers!

    As Frankie Boyle would say, these are useless unless they can carry a tray of drinks...

  6. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
    Coat

    Playing God

    My views on vivisection and related issues are mixed but, "Hey, we've made them glow in the dark, now we can give them Parkinson's", does sound less than delightful.

    But never mind, as long as we get something out of it, it doesn't matter what degree of suffering is caused.

    Mine's the fake fur.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Screw the animal right activ ... er ... terrorists!

    "Regardless of how much the researchers try to force a nonhuman primate to have features of human beings, numerous, significant and inexorable species differences will ultimately negate the biomedical utility of any research done on them."

    So I'd suggest these plonkers put their body where their mouths are and volunteer, after all, if anyone, they can help overcome these "numerous, significant and inexorable species differences" - oh wait, that's right, they're just a bunch of attention-whoring hypocrites on a moral crusade.

    Idiots like that should be cleansed from the genepool - under scientific observation so that the hypocrisy gene can be excised as soon as possible ....

    Anon/black helicopter, because I don't want the family of my friends' friends terrorized by a bunch of rabid loonies ...

  8. Pascal Dornier
    Heart

    Marmosetzilla returns ?

    I am sure even the 20 cm version would be plenty good at making a big mess, fast...

  9. AndyC

    At last...

    The Evil Monkey that lives in my closet will not be able to sneak up on me in the dark, although, seeing that glow moving around may be a bit more disturbing...

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bailey is and idiot

    Her statement makes no sense. We're not testing pharmaceuticals. This is to improve our understanding of genetics.

  11. Francis Fish
    Unhappy

    I know why they did this, but ...

    It's easy to test and see if the gene has been expressed in the monkeys and their offspring.So they want to prove the technology.

    But I'm with the BUAV on this one, seems a bit cruel and pointless. They're living thinking creatures - I might feel guiltily ok about research on AIDS. But this is just wrong.

  12. A. Lewis

    Photos!

    Where are the photos?!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jellyfish

    Can the Cnidarian experts at the Reg's Defence and Ooze desk tell us if these are the much feared IMMORTAL jellyfish?

  14. Frank

    Unintended Consequences

    What happens if one of these escapes back into the wild? After a few generations (not long), the jungle will be full of glowing marmosets!

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Where can I...

    so where can I buy one of these?

  16. Martin
    Go

    Unintended Consequences? Darwin rules!

    "After a few generations (not long), the jungle will be full of glowing marmosets!"

    No it won't. I can't help thinking that Darwinian natural selection will tend to select against glowing marmosets - if they glow in the dark, they are easily caught and eaten.

  17. Richard

    Japanese Glow Monkeys

    Tell me they have blue hair. (You gotta have blue hair.)

    As for the anti-vivisectionists, perhaps they'd like to google the name "Thalidomide" to see why tests are done on animals. (Personally, I think we should do the tests on political activists, but I understand that rats and marmosets are much closer to humans.)

  18. Mark Duncan
    Happy

    This has been previously covered

    http://www.cracked.com/article_15801_p2.html

    "The researchers justify continuation of these experiments with a lot of fancy talk about tracking the genetic markers and learning how to create stable, transgenic monkeys for future experiments. But, in the end we all know that, like us, they really only wanted to throw decadent and hilarious monkey raves. "

  19. Jim Cosser

    Glowing...but not

    I dont get how these creatures are described as 'glowing' but they only glow under UV light...bloody useless! We need the nightlight monkeys and we need them now.

    Admittedly they could be useful for working in nightclubs as glowing waiters.

  20. Andy ORourke
    Joke

    @ Martin

    Darwin Rules might work the other way round.....

    "small monkeys which glow green when exposed to ultraviolet light." might end up creating scary predators which emit ultraviolet light in order to catch the small creatures!

  21. phix8

    @ Unintended consequences

    With a background in evolutionary biology more than genetics, I can say we really wouldn't have to worry about this gene being spread around in the wild - monkey eating creatures will soon solve the problem with a diet of easy-to-find tasty primate kebabs.

    If humans had had a glow in the dark gene, it would have been similarly removed from our genetic makeup by keen-eyed sabre-tooth tigers a long time ago!

    I don't think this is cruel. I just want to know where I can get one - but I'd prefer a blue glow to green.

  22. jai

    it's just the begining....

    it seems a bit like the start of the Hulk movie, next they'll be splicing the monkeys with startfish to give them regeneration abilities and so on

    so cool!

    i for one welcome our glow-in-the-dark primate overlords

  23. Alistair
    Happy

    Woo big long scary words

    Inexorable? Vivisection? What does it all mean?

    I for one would welcome our new easy-to-hunt dayglo prey animals. Mmm delicious juicy marmoset.

    Ketchup on standby.

  24. Mark Duncan

    Hmm

    Where will this end, next thing you know they will be crossing toads and hippopota-ALL GLORY TO THE HIPPOTOAD!

  25. Fizzl
    Thumb Up

    More please!

    Totally marketable, they will be in pet shops within 5 years.

  26. Adam Foxton
    Paris Hilton

    @Frank

    No they won't. Can you imagine being a glowing marmoset and trying to hide from a predator?

    Also the BUAV just need to shut the [flip] up. These animals are really quite similar to us, so why wouldn't they tell us about ourselves?

    Actually, you know what? Lets create a glow in the dark Human instead! Yeah! That's much less likely to be 'morally reprehensible'.

    Paris because I'm hoping she'd agree to help me with the subject's conception.

  27. Casper Orillian
    Boffin

    Glowing Me?

    Is it wrong that i want this?

  28. This post has been deleted by its author

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    DO

    WANT

  30. Jared Vanderbilt
    Paris Hilton

    Accessorise me!

    So, do these hides glow after they've been tanned? Imagine the marketability of glowing leather accessories for the S&M industry. Spank that monkey with a ... well ... another monkey.

    Paris: Spankings, monkeys, ... is it getting hot in here?

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    @Mark Duncan

    I once tried crossing a hippo and a toad. Not only didn't get any offspring, now everytime the toad sneezes, it turns inside out. :)

    Sorry. Couldn't resist.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Supermodel?

    Hardly, unless it can drill you between the eyes with a mobe at 10 metres.

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    What about all the mistakes along the way...

    ...like Brundell/Monkey and Monkey/Pod and the Inside-Out Monkey?

  34. Rob Dobs

    Lets clear some things up....

    The monkey does not glow in the dark - it glows when shone with UV light.

    Only if the predators could see in UV, and had a UV light to shine on the monkey would it be more visible.

    Valid concerns about this are certainly that they could get into the wild, spark new genetic diseases etc.

    The overall benefit should out weigh the costs and risks if the scientists conducting this study are smart and not cruel to the poor animals.

    Being able to glow in UV allows us to "see" organs, tissue, and body systems literally in a new light. It may make it easier to see the cause of some problems, and the effects of some solutions and medicine.

    The are also able to study gene splicing and manipulation (surely the wave of the future).

    So maybe they can try to harness the regenerative properties of starfish, and find a way to add them to our COLLECTIVE!!

    Oh my, we should be careful that we don't become the BORG!

  35. Filippo Silver badge

    constructive criticism? we've heard of it

    I'm still waiting for anti-vivisectionist and anti-animal-testing to propose a viable alternative. What I don't understand is whether they'd prefer new medicines to get used on humans before we even know what they do, or not to be developed at all.

    And the point about biological differences invalidating animal tests is near the top of the list of biggest piles of bullshit ever spouted. If that was true, we wouldn't be doing animal tests, duh.

  36. Max_Normal
    Thumb Down

    @Rob Dobs

    Sorry you are greatly mislead. We have been tagging GFP to proteins in tissue cultures for literally years so that we can see how the proteins interact using confocal microscopy, this is a boring everyday tech.

    For years we have also been either deleting genes in mice or fruit flies or adding in new or mutated genes that mimic deleted, duplicated or mutated genes in various human disease states. These are then termed "transgenic organisms"

    The importance of this is that these were the first transgenic primates, and as such make a much better system to model human disease states using transgene technology. The GFP was merely used to prove that an arbitary gene had succesfully been inserted into the genome of the organism as proof of concept, the fact that it glows has no other significance whatsoever, none whatsoever.

    Apart from a nice new model organism, this is just very old technology being applied to a new species and frankly we should be cynical of all the hype that the media stir up whenever this is done. (it was done in mice and rabbits10 years ago, google "Alba the GFP bunny".

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