Back to Siberia, Comrades

Soviet scientists have not yet taught shrimps to whistle, but Radio Moscow last week reported an even more fantastic feat. Geologists in northern Siberia, it recounted breathlessly, dug up a pair of salamanders that had been frozen for 5,000 years, thawed them out and fed them berries and mosquitoes from their hands. One of the prehistoric newts (tritons) scampered happily about for three weeks before it died; it was then bottled and sent to a Moscow University laboratory. Its comrade lived for several months in a museum.

Radio Moscow, which said the tale of two tritons was based on an account in a Soviet literary magazine, even suggested that the discovery might have momentous implications for space flight. If newts could survive all that time, why not deepfreeze Soviet cosmonauts and thus eliminate the need for food during their long voyages through the universe?

Radio Moscow's story blew up a storm of cables and telephone calls from Western newsmen panting after all the newty details. And, though U.S. scientists soon pooh-poohed the salamander saga, it made the front pages of most U.S. newspapers, which since Sputnik I have tended to overplay far-out Soviet scientific claims. Then a Russian scientist debunked the story. Professor Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky. head of the space biology laboratory at the Leningrad Institute of Cytology, disclosed that it had been lifted from a children's book, and "has nothing to do with science." Snapped he: "The author of this tale should be punished." From Radio Moscow: Siberian silence.

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