Bugging Device

‘FROM now on not only chickens will be barcoded.

Tin of tuna – £0.65

The Independent says that today marks the beginning of a project to barcode the 10 million species of life on Earth.

Less than a fifth of all the planet’s species of animal and plant life have been formally named and classified, says the paper, and many fear that these unregistered life forms will die out before we have realised what they are.

Hence the Barcoding of Life Project, in which every species will be given its own barcode, made up of a string of DNA unique to each.

This will lead to the development of a hand-held gadget by which anyone will be able to identify a species they see in seconds.

”The dream is that a six-year-old kid walking down the street hauls out of his back pocket something possibly the size of a comb, picks up that ant off the ground, drops it in,” says Daniel Janzen, an ecologist in the Guardian.

The machine then tells the curious nipper what the creature is. He then tells his mum. She tells the pest control man. The pest control man kills the Pheidole such-and-such.

And so the circle of life is complete…’

Posted: 10th, February 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink