Local residents will be able to see three male goats cloned by Chinese scientists during the first Animal Festival at the Shanghai Zoo that began on Saturday and runs until June 10.
Admission is 35 yuan (US$4.20). From May 1 to 7, the festival will also feature a Vietnamese water puppet show.
Other animals on display include a rare 100-kilogram python that is 6 meters long from a zoo in Fanyu in Guangdong Province, and 40 rare species of snakes to mark the Year of the Snake.
There will also be lion- and tiger-taming shows.
Hosting the goats from the China Cloned Animal Center in Shaanxi Province is a major responsibility, said Xiong Chengpei, zoo director. It would be unacceptable for any of them to die during the festival, he emphasized.
That thinking led Xiong to give Gu Wenyang, the zoo's most experienced animal caretaker, who currently is in charge of feeding the zoo's tigers, responsibility for the cloned goats.
Xiong said it is "a wonder" that one of the goats, born in 1995, is the "cloned grandfather" of the two older cloned goats, both 7 years old.
There will be several lectures on cloning during the festival, whose theme is "Love Animals and Worship Science."
"Since Beijing is bidding to host the 2008 Olympics, we are displaying all of the mascots from the past 30 Olympic Games on the zoo's central field," the zoo director said.
(Eastday.com.cn 04/09/2001)
