In a basement laboratory abutting a 730-hectare wildlife park in San Diego, California, Marlys Houck looks up to see a uniformed man holding a blue insulated lunch bag filled with small pieces of eyes, trachea, feet and feathers.
"Ah," she says, softly. "Here are today's samples."
The bag contains small bits of soft tissue from animals who have died of natural causes at the zoo. Today's samples include a leaf frog and a starling.
The man holding the bag is James Boggeln, a volunteer with the zoo, who hands it to Houck, the curator of this laboratory, known as the "Frozen Zoo". She and her team will start turning these bits of tissue into a bank of research and conservation for the future. They will put the tissue into flasks where enzymes digest them, then the lab members will slowly incubate them over a month - growing an abundance of cells that can be frozen and reanimated for future use.
At nearly 50 years old, the Frozen Zoo holds the world's oldest, largest and most diverse repository of living cell cultures more than 11,000 samples that represent 1,300 different species and subspecies, including three extinct species and more that are very close to extinction.
Today the Frozen Zoo is operated by an all-female team of four, who watch over a vast collection of hand-marked vials with labels such as "giraffe", "rhino" and "armadillo", all stored in massive circular tanks filled with liquid nitrogen. In a world suffering from a climate and biodiversity crisis, putting species on ice offers one way to be hopeful about the future.
The work done here has always felt meaningful, but an accelerating extinction crisis has put mounting pressure on Houck and her team. It's a race against time to put samples into the Frozen Zoo before they slip away from the world. The women see it as their duty to hold the future in place.
Denne historien er fra March 15, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra March 15, 2024-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
DNA sheds new light on victim of doomed Arctic trip
For more than a century, the bones of sailors who joined polar explorer Sir John Franklin's ill-fated Northwest Passage expedition lay scattered on the rocky shores of an Arctic island.
Singer's case highlights rising crisis in online gambling
In less than 24 hours, Gusttavo Lima, one of the most famous Brazilian country singers, sang at a rodeo in rural São Paulo state, watched Akon perform at the Rock in Rio festival, jetted to Miami - and became the target of an arrest warrant on suspicion of money laundering.
Repeated risk Targeting of Hezbollah leaders has yet to deal group a fatal blow
In 1992, Israeli media celebrated an assassination.
Be a batch maker: cook-ahead ideas for effortless meals and treats
Cook-once, eat-all-week recipes are a godsend, just so long as they're versatile. \"I would roast a load of tomatoes to make sauce,\" says Jess Elliott Dennison, author of Midweek Recipes. \"You get that fresh flavour.\"
Where reality meets Nintendo
Anew museum in Kyoto takes fans of the Japanese gaming giant’ products on anenchanting trip down virtualmemory lane if only youcan get a ticket...
Silk Roads spin a tale of collective treasures
Amesmerising show at the British Museum follows China’ epic ancient trade routes through fabulous oases, desert palaces and burial mounds
'More people say they've seen an alien than a trans person'
Harper Steele came out as a trans woman in 2022 at the age of 61. Her friend Will Ferrell had questions. So why not take a road trip and make a documentary about it?
Trump v Harris has opened up a gulf between the sexes
I hesitate to give JD Vance any ideas, but if American women were denied the vote, Donald Trump would be restored to the White House in a landslide.
Seeing double
What does it feel like to discover, in adulthood, that you are a twin? Here, five sets of brothers and sisters tell their stories of meeting for the first time and what happened next
The shapeshifter
Giorgia Meloni been called a neo-fascist and a danger to Italy. But she worked hard to achieve a degree of respectability and has won over many heads of Europe, including the new UK prime minister. Should we be worried?