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"You have to help the his head "What happens in the wild?"
"In the wild?"
"When they breed in the wild," Grant said "When they make a nest"
"Oh, they can&039;t do that," Wu said "None of our ani That&039;s e have this nursery It&039;s the only way to replace stock in Jurassic Park"
"Why can&039;t the animals breed?"
"Well, as you can iine, it&039;s important that they not be able to breed," Wu said "And whenever we faced a critical ned redundant systeed at least two control procedures In this case, there are two independent reasons why the animals can&039;t breed First of a they&039;re sterile, because we irradiate them with X-rays"
"And the second reason?"
"All the animals in Jurassic Park are female," Wu said, with a pleased smile
Malcolm said, "I should like some clarification about this Because it seeht with uncertainty The radiation doseanatomical area of the animal-"
"All true," Wu said "But we&039;re quite confident we have destroyed gonadal tissue"
"And as for the feo out and, ah, lift up the dinosaurs&039; skirts to have a look? I mean, how does one determine the sex of a dinosaur, anyway?"
"Sex organs vary with the species It&039;s easy to tell on some, subtle on others But, to answer your question, the reason we know all the animals are female is that we literally make them that e control their chro develop standpoint, females are easier to breed You probably know that all vertebrate embryos are inherently female We all start life as females It takes sohtembryo into a male But, left to its own devices, the embryo will naturally become female So our animals are all female We tend to refer to some of them as male-such as the Tyrannosaurus rex; we all call it a &039;him&039;-but in fact, they&039;re all female And, believe me, they can&039;t breed"
The little velociraptor sniffed at Tiled
"She wants you to feed her," Wu said
"What does she eat?"
"Mice But she&039;s just eaten, so on&039;t feed her again for a while"
The little raptor leaned back, stared at Tiain in the air Tiers of each haain
Grant came over, and peered critically at the creature He touched the tiny three-clawed band He said to Tim, "Do you mind?" and Tim released the raptor into his hands
Grant flipped the aniled and squirh to look at its profile, and it screamed shrilly
"She doesn&039;t like that," Regis said "Doesn&039;t like to be held away from body contact"
The raptor was still screa the tail, feeling the bones Regis said, "Dr Grant If you please"
"I&039; her"
"Dr Grant These creatures are not of our world They cos around to prod and poke them"
"I&039; and-"
"Dr Grant Put her down, " Ed Regis said
"But-"
"Now " Regis was starting to get annoyed
Grant handed the ani Tiainst his chest
"I&039;is said "But these animals are delicate in infancy We have lost several from a postnatal stress syndrome, which we believe is adrenocortically mediated Sometimes they die within five minutes"
Tim petted the little raptor "It&039;s okay, kid," he said "Everything&039;s fine now" The heart was still beating rapidly
"We feel it is important that the aniis said "I promise you that you will have every opportunity to examine them later"
But Grant couldn&039;t stay away He againat it
The little velociraptor opened her jaws and hissed at Grant, in a posture of sudden intense fury
"Fascinating," Grant said
"Can I stay and play with her?" Tiht now," Ed Regis said, glancing at his watch "It&039;s three o&039;clock, and it&039;s a good time for a tour of the park itself, so you can see all the dinosaurs in the habitats we have designed for them"
Tim released the velociraptor, which sca, put it in her ed at the end with her tiny claws
Control
Walking back toward the control room, Malcolm said, "I have one more question, Dr Wu How many different species have you made so far?"
"I&039;m not exactly sure," Wu said "I believe the number at the moment is fifteen Fifteen species Do you know, Ed?"
"Yes, it&039;s fifteen," Ed Regis said, nodding
"You don&039;t know for sure?" Malcol astonishment
Wu s," he said, "after the first dozen And you have to realize that sometimes we think we have an animal correctly made-from the standpoint of the DNA, which is our basic work-and the ani untoward happens And we realize there is so A hor released Or some other probleo back to the drawing board with that aniht I had more than twenty species, But now, only fifteen"
"And is one of the fifteen species a-" Malcolm turned to Grant "What was the nanathus, " Grant said
"You have nathuses, or whatever they&039;re called?" Malcolm asked
"Oh yes," Wu said immediately "Compys are very distinctive anie number of them"
"Why is that?"
"Well, ant Jurassic Park to be as real an environnathids are actual scavengers from the Jurassic period Rather like jackals So anted to have the compys around to clean up"
"You mean to dispose of carcasses?"
"Yes, if there were any But with only two hundred and thirty-odd animals in our total population, we don&039;t have many carcasses," Wu said "That wasn&039;t the primary objective Actually, anted the coement entirely"
"Which was?"
"Well," Wu said, "we have so herbivores on this island We have specifically tried not to breed the biggest sauropods, but even so, we&039;ve got several ani around out there, and ives us two proble them, and in fact we must import food to the island every teeks There is no way an island this small can support these animals for any time
"But the other problem is waste I don&039;t know if you&039;ve ever seen elephant droppings," Wu said, "but they are substantial Each spoor is roughly the size of a soccer ball Ie Now is of a herd of such aniest their food terribly well, so that they excrete a great deal And in the sixty million years since dinosaurs disappeared, apparently the bacteria that specialize in breaking down their feces disappeared, too At least, the sauropod feces don&039;t decompose readily"
"That&039;s a problem," Malcolm said
"I assure you it is," Wu said, not s to solve it You probably know that in Africa there is a specific insect, the dung beetle, which eats elephant feces Many other large species have associated creatures that have evolved to eat their excrement Well, it turns out that coest it And the droppings of coiven enough compys, our problem was solved"
"How many compys did you otten exactly, but I think the target population was fifty animals And we attained that, or very nearly so In three batches We did a batch every six months until we had the number"
"Fifty animals," Malcolm said, "is a lot to keep track of"
"The control room is built to do exactly that They&039;ll show you how it&039;s done"
"I&039;m sure," Malcolm said "But if one of these coet away
"They can&039;t get away"
"I know that, but just supposing one did"
"You mean like the ani his eyebrows "The one that bit the Airl?"
"Yes, for example"
"I don&039;t knohat the explanation for that animal is," Wu said "But I know it can&039;t possibly be one of ours, for two reasons First, the control procedures: our animals are counted by co, we&039;d know at once"
"And the second reason?"
"The mainland is et there by boat And in the outside world our animals will die within twelve hours," Wu said
"How do you know?"
"Because I&039;ve made sure that&039;s precisely ill occur," Wu said, finally showing a trace of irritation "Look, we&039;re not fools We understand these are prehistoric aniy-a coo They ht have no predators in the conterowth We don&039;t want them to survive in the wild So I&039;ve ene that le faulty enzyme in protein metabolism As a result, the aniest it froenous lysine-supplied by us, in tablet foro into a coenetically engineered to be unable to survive in the real world They can only live here in Jurassic Park They are not free at all They are essentially our prisoners"
"Here&039;s the control roois said "Now that you kno the animals are made, you&039;ll want to see the control rooo out on the-"
He stopped Through the thick glass , the room was dark Thenue boat
"What&039;s going on?" Ed Regis said "Oh hell, they&039;re docking"
"Docking?"
"Every teeks, the supply boat cos this island doesn&039;t have is a good harbor, or even a good dock It&039;s a little hairy to get the ship in, when the seas are rough Could be a few minutes" He rapped on the , but the uess we have to wait, then"
Ellie turned to Dr Wu "You mentioned before that sometirows, it shows itself to be flawed"
"Yes," Wu said "I don&039;t think there&039;s any way around that We can duplicate the DNA, but there is a lot of ti is working unless we actually see an animal develop correctly"
Grant said, "How do you know if it&039;s developing correctly? No one has ever seen these animals before"
Wu sht about that I suppose it is a bit of a paradox Eventually, I hope, paleontologists such as yourself will compare our animals with the fossil record to verify the developmental sequence"
Ellie said, "But the anioliensis?"
"From the location of the amber," Wu said "It it is fro," Grant said "I was just digging up an infant antirrhopus Are there any full-grown raptors here?"
"Yes," Ed Regis said without hesitation "Eight adult females The females are the real hunters They&039;re pack hunters, you know"
"Will we see them on the tour?"
"No," Wu said, looking suddenly uncois
"Not for a while," Regis said cheerfully "The velociraptors haven&039;t been integrated into the park setting just yet We keep the pen,"
"Can I see them there?" Grant said
"Why, yes, of course In fact, while we&039;re waiting"-he glanced at his watch-"you o around and have a look at them"
"I certainly would," Grant said
"Absolutely," Ellie said
"I want to go, too," Tio around the back of this building, past the support facility, and you&039;ll see the pen But don&039;t get too close to the fence Do you want to go, too?" he said to the girl
"No," Lex said She looked appraisingly at Regis "You want to play a little pickle? Throw a few?"
"Well, sure," Ed Regis said "Why don&039;t you and I go downstairs and we&039;ll do that, while ait for the control room to open up?"
Grant walked with Ellie and Malcol along Grant liked kids-it was iroup so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs Grant used to watch kids inskeletons rising above them He wondered what their fascination really represented He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of loo and frightening, like parents And kids loved them, as they loved their parents
Grant also suspected that hy even young children learned the names of dinosaurs It never failed to a these coiants, a way of being in control
"What do you know about Velociraptor? " Grant asked Ti conversation
"It&039;s a small carnivore that hunted in packs, like Deinonychus, " Tiht," Grant said, "although the evidence for pack hunting is all circumstantial It derives in part fro, but small for dinosaurs-just a hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds each We assuer prey And there are soe prey ani they hunted in packs And, of course, raptors were large-brained, ent than most dinosaurs"
"How intelligent is that?" Malcolm asked
"Depends on who you talk to," Grant said "Just as paleontologists have come around to the idea that dinosaurs were probably warht have been quite intelligent, too But nobody knows for sure"
They left the visitor area behind, and soon they heard the loud huasoline They passed a grove of pale, low concrete shed with a steel roof The noise seemed to come from there They looked in the shed