The Red Canary: The Story of the First Genetically Engineered Animal

by TimBirkhead (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  In 1921, forty-year-old schoolteacher Hans Duncker set off through the streets of Bremen. Near the cathedral, he heard a nightingale singing - but this was August and no one had ever heard a nightingale sing in the middle of the town at this time of year. In fact, the bird he heard was extraordinary - it was a special canary (a nightingale-canary) that Karl Reichs, a bird keeper, had engineered through a decade of dedicated breeding. With Reich's knowledge of birds and Duncker's expertise in genetics, the two joined forces and devised the audacious plan to create a brand new bird - a red canary. Favoured originally for their voices, canaries were once so rare that they were worth more than their weight in gold and had been exported in their millions. With Duncker and Reich's research, the canary once more took centre stage - this time in the race to create a genetically engineered animal. But it wasn't until an Englishman and an American recognised that the red canary would need to be a product of both nature AND nurture that the project was finally brought to fruition.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.25

  At the turn of the 20th century canary mania spread from the US and South Africa to Europe, with 150,000 males being raised each year to satisfy demand. Hans Duncker, a German bird enthusiast, was fascinated by the fact that in the 1870s English canary breeders had caused a scandal by feeding their Norwich canaries with red peppers to turn them orange. Duncker spent the rest of his life (1881-1961) using breeding rather than feeding to try and produce a red canary. Duncker's ultimately unsuccessful work was picked up by an Englishman, Anthony Gill, and an American, Charles Bennett, in the 1930s. This was all long before genetically modified organisms and Dolly the sheep, but this amazing story (with its backdrop of the rise of Nazism and eugenic policies) has huge contemporary relevance. This is a highly original narrative revealing how an amateur obsession heralded the inherent dangers of genetic manipulation.