Test tube unicorns
I was asked recently if I could make a unicorn. Theoretically, I think it’s fully possible with two provisos: you can prevent rejection of cow tissue in horses (an immunology problem), and horse bone has the right cellular receptors (molecules) to respond to growth signals from cow-like skin tissue. After that, no sweat. They ‘been making cow unicorns for some time now.
To get the twisty unicorn horn, you’d have to get special cows - cow relatives, that is, and probably my dear Tragelaphine bovids, the spiral-horned antelope (although I can imagine good unicorn horns make from the markhor goat, though it would require an exceptional equine to carry one). The rest are either too straight or too loopy to be good candidates. And yes, they all have to be bovids (remember goats are bovids too), because they’re the only one with horns, and the only living mammals (to my knowledge) that have twisty head appendages. Deer are all wrong. (Post on the jackalope coming soon).
I’m split on the appropriate tragelaphine species though. At this point I’d recommend bushbucks for pony-sized unicorns, and elands for Clydesdale-sized unicorns. Maybe sitatunga or nyala for medium sized unicorns, but the horns aren’t very twisty. Kudu are only suitable if you want to expand the concept of unicorn and really freak people out (and probably render the poor creature helpless - it would have to live in a doorjamb-free environment, to say the least).
So, if it ever comes up in conversation…. now you know.
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It’s time like this that mutants seem like a better and better idea. You can occasionally get a prefrontal ossification; I don’t know why you couldn’t get a spinny horn on it too.
Comment by Sarah — July 28, 2007 @ 12:37 am
Oh yeah - I totally forgot: I’ve got pics of a greater kudu frontal with the usual set of horns - and a bud of a third horn right where a third eye would be! It’s so awesome. I’ll post the pic soon.
Come to think of it, why make a poor horse grow a unicorn? Just transplant it wholesale from a stock of mutant tragelaphines bred to crank out donor horns! Brilliant! ‘Course, post-donoation and post-implantation imbalances in the neck muscles of the respective creatures would result in some funny (and spectacularly dangerous) capers. Best to let them work it out in a large, treeless field.
Comment by praxical — July 31, 2007 @ 12:52 pm