Last weekend, UK newspaper the Daily Mail published an article about evolutionary biologists altering the DNA of chicken embryos so that the embryos developed alligator-like snouts instead of beaks. The scientists suppose chickens are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, and that chickens once had reptilian snouts millions of years in the past.

Obviously, the first question any God-fearing American conservative should ask upon reading about scientists screwing around with DNA in order to put alligator snouts on chickens is, “Why the hell do we need chickens with alligator snouts?” After all, the Bible explicitly forbids fooling around with the magic building blocks of human life-it’s in there with the shit about Jesus being Caucasian and the nobility of amassing personal wealth, if you want it to be hard enough.

The Mail story explains this reverse engineering could lead to “improving” contemporary species so they’ll be better suited to changing climates and environments, as well as the usual claims about such research leading to invaluable advances in medical science. In an opinion column on CNN.com, renowned paleontologist Jack Horner also suggests this and other experiments might be used to educate the general public in evolutionary processes.

Of course, none of those is the real reason why we’re making ChickenGators.

The real reason why we’re making ChickenGators is this: Continue reading →