All white elephants property of Royal family Scientists in Thailand have begun a project to clone an elephant from the preserved remains of a prize specimen that died more than a 100 years ago.
Elephants are the country's national symbol.
White ones have lighter colored skin around their ears, eyes, trunks, and sometimes other parts of their bodies. The scientists have already succeeded in cloning a cow. The 10-year project will replenish Thailand's wild elephant population. It has dwindled from around 50,000 in the 1960s to just 2,000 in the wild today. The main problem has been the shrinking area of the animals' natural habitat, which is now too small to support them in large numbers.