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back to article Enormous Paleozoic flesh-eaters created in lab

Crazed boffins in the USA say they have successfully carried out a Jurassic Park-style project in which enormous flesh-eating creatures from the remote prehistoric past have been successfully bred in the laboratory. Incomprehensibly this laboratory is not located on a remote island. As many readers will doubtless be aware, …

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  1. jake Silver badge

    Arizona? There's your problem ... Too dry.

    Just head for Florida or the other various Caribbean states where humidity hovers around 100% ... Mosquitoes the size of Piper Cubs & cockroaches the size of bedroom slippers are as common as muck.

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  2. Efros

    One word for this person

    ZARBIES!

    Smarten up before we're all ant fodder... erm wait a minute.

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  3. Bilgepipe
    Alert

    This can only end badly

    Presumably all the dragonflies and radioactive horror monsters are female, to prevent breeding? Yeah yeah, we've heard it all before.

    I'm going to fetch Jeff Goldblum immediately.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    Aaaagghhh!!!

    "We are ONE OF THE ONLY groups to successfully rear them to adulthood under laboratory conditions." (My Capitals)

    My pet hate! Are you one of the few/many are are you THE ONLY?

    No apology, no surrender!

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  5. nichomach
    Alien

    a title. Happy now?

    "...and in fact undergraduate students Elyse Muñoz and Michael Weed working with Dr VandenBrooks had to resort to hand feeding the dragonflies."

    WIth real hands, presumably...

    ET looked closest to a mutated dragonfly.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Actually that's not the one that gives me the heebie jeebies

    It's Arthropleura that does it for me - a 2-3m long centi/millipede thing which scuttled around in the Upper Carboniferous.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re:

      Might have to content yourself with this for now.

      http://www.vat19.com/dvds/worlds-largest-gummy-worm.cfm

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    2. Morpho Devilpepper
      Reply Icon
      Headmaster

      Caught you didn't I

      Another fan of "Primeval" I see...

      At any rate, it sounds as if what's actually happening is that modern insects are stimulated to grow to prehistoric proportions in a simulated paleozoic environment. Thankfully there's no splice-and-dice geneterrorism going on here.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    2-3 m long beastie?

    So long as it keeps to the Upper Carboniferous that will be fine by me.

    (Imagine one or two of those sneaking into the tent when the flap was open.)

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  8. disgruntled yank

    No doubt popularizing the 2nd Amendment with the NPR set

    I look forward to the day when suburban soccer moms, who formerly regarded the National Rifle Association as Satan's spawn, tote AK-47s or pump shotguns in their Lexus SUVs to protect their offspring from oversize dragonflies. Charlton Heston would be proud.

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    1. Nexox Enigma
      Reply Icon

      Yes, please

      At least shoot the idea over to the sci-fi (SyFy!?!) channel, I think they need something else for Ice Cube to star in. And I'm sure they'd love the gun rack in the minivan aspect too. Also it'd give me something entertaining to watch on those slow afternoons when I'm "working" from home.

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  9. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Boffin

    The advantage of using undergrads

    is that you do not waste so much education if things go horribly wrong. A page out of the Unseen University manual.

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  10. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Welcome

    Well, I for one...

    welcome our new 'feast on the wing' giant dragonfly overlords!

    Oh, wait, just remembered I'm heading off on a paragliding holiday this afternoon...

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  11. A. Coatsworth Silver badge
    Coat

    Two dragonflies with one stone

    "There is no such thing as dragonfly chow. As juveniles they need to hunt live prey and in fact undergraduate students... "

    When I read that I thought they had found a way to curb the number of unemployed grads in the next years and at the same time keep your horrible Paleozoic monsters alive...

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  12. Pantelis
    Thumb Down

    Pictures

    This article is worthless without pictures!!

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  13. K. Adams
    Black Helicopters

    Playmobile...

    ... or it didn't happen.

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    C'mon Reg, you left out the part....

    Where overeager eggheads complete the prehistoric dragonfly genome with DNA from human or dolphin brains!!

    I for one welcome our brainy, child-snatching dragonfly overlords!!

    Now if you excuse me, I am off to the gun store to buy a pump action and some double-aught buckshot.....

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  15. Doshu

    Could they really survive...

    ... if let loose in the outside world? I mean, since they absorb oxygen by osmosis, i doubt that today's comparatively rarefied mix would keep them going for long.

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    1. Allan George Dyer
      Reply Icon
      Headmaster

      Osmosis?

      I don't think so! What is dissolved in the oxygen?

      Diffusion from the tracheae into the tissues is the mechanism, assisted by forced ventilation of the tracheae by muscle power and valves.

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @AC 13:58

    "sneaking into the tent when the flap was open"

    Great, a new euphemism to add to the Frankie Howerd collection.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Adds a new meaning to the word "Blow Fly"

    And your interpretation of "Blow"

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  18. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Parthenogenesis

    "Presumably all the dragonflies and radioactive horror monsters are female, to prevent breeding?"

    Some of them might reproduce anyway - see Parthenogenesis:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis

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