ON 30TH JULY 2003, A VERY SPECIAL GOAT was born in a Spanish research facility. She had wobbly legs, toffee-coloured fur and dark, doe eyes, and for a few, short moments, everyone was in awe. The newborn was a bucardo, a type of wild mountain goat that used to roam freely in the Pyrenees. Three years earlier, it had gone extinct, but now it was back.
Researchers had taken cells from the last living female before she died, and used them to make a clone, which then developed inside the womb of a domestic goat. The kid was delivered by C-section, but no sooner than she was born, she began to develop breathing problems. She died just a few minutes later, and so the bucardo became not just the first…