# Is this human hair growing "transgenic cactus" a hoax or not?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 25, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779 "2004-07-25T07:42:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779/1 "2004-07-25T07:42:07Z")

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[Cactus Project](http://prinfo.no/boland/transg/cactus_project.asp)

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**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779/2 "2004-07-25T08:20:35Z")

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Bwahaha.

Some of the other artists linked on the same page should give you a clue.

> [@](#):
>
> “I have gotten interesting results from playing Engelbert Humperdinck’s Greatest Hits for 48 hours at a time for 25 ml of an industrial strain of E. coli.”

> [@](#):
>
> Methods: The Tobiko, Wasabi and Cream Cheese were puchased from a grocery store. Under a sterile hood, autoclaved solutions of Cream Cheese and Wasabi were filtered into seperate pre-autoclaved bottles with a Gelman 0.2 micrometer sterile acrodisk water filter. These sterile solutions were then pipeted into microinjection needles. The tobiko were lined up and microinjected.

The “genetoy” that lets visitors create transgenic organisms by clicking and dragging human bits onto cactus bits is a bit of a giveaway, too.  
Cute, though.

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**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779/3 "2004-07-25T16:14:44Z")

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Should have punched deeper into the page, but it was very late and I was tired. Thanks Larry!

[sub]Oh what a sorry pack of excuses, “it was late”, “I was tired”. A f\*\*\*ing cactus growing hair! What were you thinking? Well if a tobacco plant can glow by using firefly cold light methodology, what’s next? Yeah that’s right, it was on the edge of being plausible, and it took a [visionary transgenic bio-artist artist](http://www.contumacy.org/bbs/index.pl?noframes;read=26856) to show us the way. So you can use that as your little intellectual fig leaf for even asking about the furry cactus, or better yet have the cactus grow you a little magic dunce cap woven out of cactus pubes that you can use the next time you don’t check the whole site, [and google up additional info.](http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/580/) You deserve the horse laugh by Mudd! [/sub]

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**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\
**Post date:** [July 25, 2004, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-human-hair-growing-transgenic-cactus-a-hoax-or-not/256779/4 "2004-07-25T17:20:08Z")

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Just to be clear, I was larfing at the _site_, not you **astro**.

And thanks for the link-- I _needed_ the larf.