Nania, a critically endangered forest elephant, became separated from her herd when she was only three months old, and ever since has been hand-reared by wildlife carers in her homeland, Burkina Faso. But now they are searching for her mother using DNA analysis of dung. Sam Wasser, UW Biology Research Professor and director of the Center for Conservation Biology, is quoted.
“A parent should share 50 per cent of its alleles [genes] with its daughter...So really what we’re trying to do is see in any of these family groups, do we have a parent-offspring or a full sibling or a half-sibling to Nania,” said Sam Wasser, director of the Centre for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.
Read the full article in The Independent.