By Tim Binnall
In what sounds like the opening scene to a midnight horror movie, scientists conducting a gene-editing experiment on hamsters wound up transforming the normally docile little creatures into ultra-aggressive monsters. The unsettling study was reportedly conducted by Georgia State University researchers who were working with the controversial CRISPR gene-editing technology to examine how biology effects social behavior. Specifically, they tweaked the genetic makeup of hamsters so that the diminutive animals lost the function of a hormone receptor responsible for regulating "phenomena ranging from pair bonding, cooperation, and social communication to dominance and aggression."
Theorizing that this adjustment would result in the hamsters experiencing a reduction in "both aggression and social communication," lead researcher H. Elliott Albers marveled that, to the scientists' profound surprise, "the opposite happened." To that end, the creatures that had their genetic makeup altered began chasing, biting, and pinning down their counterparts in a highly aggressive manner that went well beyond their normal behavior. The results of the study have given researchers pause when it comes to our understanding of how biology impacts social behavior and will no doubt inspire additional experiments that, we hope, will be confined to a well-secured lab to keep the ultra-aggressive hamster from making a break for it.