Wild Jazz!

Cayenne, a gray tabby house cat, has one wild kitten. He spits and swipes at anyone who comes near his cage and constantly harasses his mom. But it's no wonder Cayenne has her paws full. She gave birth as a surrogate, or substitute, mother to a completely different species of feline--an African wildcat!

Jazz was born on November 24, 1999, at the Audubon Institute for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans, La. His arrival marks the first time an animal has been produced by transplanting a frozen embryo, or fertilized egg, from one species into a "cousin" species. By using similar-sized relatives as surrogate mothers, Audubon researchers think embryo transfers may help save endangered species--like the African wildcat--from extinction.

How did Cayenne give birth to Jazz? Researchers fertilized eight wildcat eggs in a lab, grew them in an incubator for five days, and froze them at -231 [degrees] C (-384 [degrees] F) for a week. The process is called in vitro fertilization (IVF). Then researchers thawed the eggs and implanted them into Cayenne's womb. One embryo grew to full term, which takes 65 days, and was born healthy--and feisty!

While freezing embryos isn't a necessary step for transplanting them, zoos around the world have preserved endangered animals' embryos cryogenically (through freezing) since the 1970s. The embryos are stored in what are called frozen zoos, in the hope that rare or extinct animals may one day be bred through IVF. But freezing and thawing of embryos is an extremely sensitive process that differs for each animal. And it's also difficult to find the right surrogate species. Still, says Betsy Dresser, Audubon Institute research director, "if this technology was around during the time of dinosaurs, we might have dinos today."