Usually when I think of animal conservation, I think of protecting the animals' natural habitat, educating the masses on the need for conservation, and maybe even helping nature along with breeding, but I've never heard of putting them on ice!
In Moscow, a research team is trying to save the rarest of toad and frog species from extinction by freezing their sperm and eggs at minus 200 degrees for later use. With over 3,000 species on the endangered list, Natalia Sheshova from the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow says they are learning other ways to use science to their advantage as well:
“We’re learning to freeze embryo cells too, to give us a complete genetic picture. We hope that if a certain species does become extinct, we can retrieve the frozen cells and reproduce it.”
I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures!