A Brand-New Bird: How Two Amateur Scientists Created the First Genetically Engineered Animal.

TIM BIRKHEAD

As he walked through town one late-summer morning in 1921, Hans Duncker heard something peculiar--a nightingale singing. This was odd because nightingales don't sing in August and certainly not in the middle of town. Duncker discovered that the bird belonged to a bird keeper named Karl Reich and that it was not a nightingale but a canary that Reich had carefully bred to sound like a nightingale. The two Germans began to work together and blended Duncker's expertise in genetics with Reich's knowledge of birds to try to create another odd bird: a red canary. The pair ultimately by interbreeding a canary with a red siskin and repeatedly crossbreeding subsequent generations. Birkhead calls the product the first genetically engineered organism and yet describes the many ways in which Duncker and Reich failed to reach their goal. Their major shortcoming was Duncker's overriding belief in the power of genetics and his refusal to believe that color could be determined by anything other than genes. Birkhead states, "Without an environment to operate in, genes are all but meaningless." The author uses this lesson in the history of biology to illustrate the intricate dialogue between nature and nurture. Basic, 2003, 268 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $26.00.