Porcupine’s Sex Is Revealed in Its Quills
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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Scientists at the National Zoo in Washington said Tuesday that they had been able to determine a baby porcupine’s gender from the DNA in its quills.
Because a porcupine’s sexual organs are internal, it can take as long as six weeks before the gender is known. The new test did the trick in about a week, zoo officials said.
DNA was extracted from small tissue samples taken from the follicle of quills stuck to a handler’s glove. It was then amplified and analyzed. The young porcupine was a female.
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