--- title: Breeding programmes for rare animals: studbooks and frozen zoos — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Breeding programmes for rare animals: studbooks and frozen zoos», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: If only a few snow leopards are left in zoos, they could soon all be cousins, and when close relatives hav --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Breeding programmes for rare animals:… # Breeding programmes for rare animals: studbooks and frozen zoos Lesson 113 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/0/) — If only a few snow leopards are left in zoos, they could soon all be cousins, and when close relatives have babies together, hidden illnesses in the family show up much more often. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/1/) — So zoos plan carefully which animals should become parents. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/2/) — Every snow leopard in zoos is written into one giant family tree called a studbook, and a computer program looks for the pair that is least related, even if the male lives in one country and the female in another. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/4/) — In 2020 a Przewalski's horse foal called Kurt was cloned from cells frozen 40 years earlier. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/5/) — Good zoos breed to keep rare animals healthy and varied, not just to make cute babies for the news, and that is why some animals in zoos are not bred at all. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/6/) — Zoos swap animals between countries through planned breeding programmes, called EEPs in Europe and SSPs in North America. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/7/) — When close relatives have babies together, inherited illnesses become more common, so swapping animals keeps the family tree healthy. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/8/) — A studbook records every animal of one kind in zoos: its parents, birth, moves and offspring; some go back over a hundred years. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/9/) — Computer programs find pairs that are least related, so the population keeps many different genes and can cope with disease and change; sometimes the chosen pair do not get along and keepers must try again. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/10/) — Frozen zoos keep cells, eggs and sperm of rare animals at minus 196 degrees in liquid nitrogen; San Diego's Frozen Zoo holds cells from over a thousand kinds of animals. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/11/) — In 2020 a Przewalski's horse foal called Kurt was cloned from cells frozen in 1980, bringing back genes lost from the living herd; a clone has the same genes as the animal whose cells were used, and cloning needs well-kept cells, so a stone fossil cannot be cloned. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/12/) — Black-footed ferrets were thought extinct until a small group was found in Wyoming in 1981; they were bred and released, and a clone called Elizabeth Ann, made from cells frozen in the 1980s, was born in 2020. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/13/) — Zoos sometimes stop breeding an animal when there is no space or no need, and some use birth control to manage numbers. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/14/) — Births of rare animals like gorillas or rhinos are celebrated, because a small population needs every healthy baby. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/15/) — If a mother cannot care for her baby, keepers may hand-rear it, but they try to keep it with its own kind, because a chick raised only by people may not act like its own kind or fear danger in the wild; condor chicks were fed with puppets shaped like condor heads. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/16/) — Eggs in incubators are safe from predators, and in some reptiles, such as tortoises, the warmth of the egg decides whether the baby is male or female. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/17/) — Some rare birds lay a second egg if the first is taken, so a zoo can hatch two chicks instead of one. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/113-breeding-programmes-for-rare-animals/18/) — Many zoo animals, such as meerkats, are not endangered, and critics say breeding them helps only the zoo; some zoos focus on rare small animals like frogs, snails and insects. - ← previous: [Training and enrichment: keeping zoo animals busy and healthy](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/112-training-and-enrichment/) - next →: [Back to the wild: animals that zoos returned to nature](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/114-back-to-the-wild/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)