No, there's no typo in the title of the post!
Here's a really cool and somewhat disturbing thing I learnt today. There's a thing called Humster. Yeah, like hamster but with a "u".
So, what is it?
Well, it's what you get if you get a female oocyte and fertilize it with human sperm 馃槄
A humster is a hybrid cell line made from a hamster oocyte fertilized with human sperm. This is possible due to the unique promiscuity of a hamster ova, which allows it to fuse with non-hamster sperm
In case you wonder, these embryos are not viable, and if the cell is left to divide it eventually dies or something. Which only makes me wonder what the final thing would be. Like how would a human/hamster hybrid would look like? How big would it be? I guess we will never know 馃槄馃槀
Anyways, one of their main usecases is for semen analysis in couples with reproduction problems. I guess if the guy impregnates the hamster oocyte he passes with flying colors 馃槀
In this test, sperm are incubated with several hamster eggs. After seven to twenty hours, the number of sperm penetrations per egg is measured. The hamster eggs have had the zona pellucida, the outer membrane, removed鈥攈ence, zona-free
This is called the Hamster zona-free ovum test, also known as hamster egg-penetration test, or just hamster test
The other main use case is in stem cell research where they are used to bypass all the legal mumbo jumbo
To avoid legal issues with working with pure human embryonic stem cell lines.
So yeah. This is what a Humster is. You are welcome.
Below are some links if you fancy reading more about the subject
References & Further Reading