Cajun Scientists One Step Closer to Turducken Resurrection.....

Maurice, LA -  Using recovered DNA to "genetically resurrect" an extinct species sounds like the plot of a science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton, but scientists at a genetics lab in Vermilion Parish are moving closer to making this fiction a reality by bringing back the wild turducken thousands of years after the last of the unusual bird hybrids disappeared from the swamps of South Louisiana.

Celebrity Chef Gerry Firebottom, shown here next to a modern turducken culinary recreation in the kitchen of his flagship Las Vegas restaurant: Firebottom's Flavorblaster Express Train to Flavor City, USA and Grill

Thanks to generous donation from Louisiana State University and Boudreaux's Meat and Seafood Market, Cajun biologist Pirogue Mamou, known for his pioneering work in nutria mating habits, believes that his lab will soon take the first steps into a new era where the majestic turducken's gobbles, quacks, and clucks can once again be heard throughout the bayous and other waterways of the Deep South. "This has been a dream of mine every since my MawMaw first told me about them turduckens back when I was juste un petit enfant."

What many people don't realize is that the turducken currently served on Thanksgiving and Christmas platters around the country is actually a culinary mash-up first popularized by Chef Paul Prudhomme in the 1980s and isn't a wild turducken. Instead, this holiday meal showstopper is created by stuffing a deboned chicken inside of a deboned duck and then stuffing both inside of a deboned turkey, often with cornbread dressing or pork stuffing added between the layers. It's delicious, but it never actually lived in the wild and strutted, waddled, or did that awkward thing where chickens hop around and flap their wings.

The work being proposed by Dr. Mamou involves a hybrid created with the help of CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool that can splice bits of DNA recovered from frozen turducken specimens into a wild turkey, the turducken's closest living relative. The resulting animal, which is being called the chidurckey, won't be a true turducken in the genetic sense, but it would theoretically look and behave like one. And most importantly, it would taste like one.

"First we created a turkey with a duck inside of it, mais c'était facile cher," Mamou explained. "The final hurdle will be much trickier, but with the gene editing capabilities of CRISPR-Cas9 we are now very close to that thing being born with a chicken up its ass."

Despite the promise of the return of the turducken, not all experts are on board. Some, like vertebrate paleontologist Beatrice Downer, see promise in perfecting the early steps of the process but question whether the turducken is a worthwhile focus for the technology. "Even if the researchers in Louisiana can bring back turduckens, and it isn't entirely clear that this will be successful, I have to ask...should they? Should they do this when there are so many delicious species that are still around but currently endangered, like the gurducken, the cowpigen, and the Appalachian flying squirrel."

Dr. Mamou isn't planning on letting the objections of other scientists slow down research that he sees as extremely important and highly personal. "Who are they to decide which species is more deserving of existence? Or whose culture is more deserving of a chance to return to its roots? They can do their own work and leave the turduckens to me and my team down here on the bayou. Laisse-nous tranquille!"