By STEVE CONNOR
LONDON - Thor, an eight-day-old eaglet, is the first eagle in the world to be conceived using artificial insemination of frozen sperm - a technique that may one day help to preserve endangered species of large raptors.
He is the result of a cross between two captive birds
of prey used for falconry, a 5-year-old male golden eagle and a female Steppe eagle, who is 8 years old.
Dr Graham Wishart, a reproductive biologist at the University of Abertay, Dundee, and Andrew Knowles-Brown, a Scottish falconer, carried out the experiment to show that it was possible to use frozen sperm for breeding eagles.
Wishart said: "We are particularly excited about Thor's birth because it shows this complex science can be taken out of the laboratory and used by falconers and other aviculturists."
Using frozen sperm would enable zoos and avian conservationists to improve breeding stock by cross-fertilisation. "We hope our research will help safeguard endangered birds of prey such as the golden eagle," he said.
"This is an important extra tool that can be used to build up endangered bird populations in the relative safety of captivity, before releasing them into the wild. The beauty about using [frozen] sperm is that you can freeze semen indefinitely.
"One could envisage a situation where a species of bird was in danger of extinction, but the best chance of its survival came from artificially inseminating a bird in Australia with the sperm of a bird in the UK," Wishart said.
Thor, the first of five fertile eggs to hatch by the technique, will not be released into the wild. As a hybrid between two closely related species, he could pose a danger to the purebred, wild golden eagles in the Scottish Highlands.
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