Elsa, who had formed a maternal bond with Dren, changes her mind after Dren shows violent behavior, killing her own pet cat out of spite and assaulting her. Meanwhile, Dren has become amphibious and omnivorous with a toxic sting and retractable wings coming out of parts of her arm and back. Their work at the company suffers as their attention is focused on Dren. Following this meeting, N.E.R.D., found itself in danger of going out of business unless they could find a profitable discovery. This led to a disastrous presentation during a company shareholders' meeting, when the two original hybrids, previously one male and one female very much in love with each other, became both male, saw each other as rivals and bloodily killed each other in front of a shocked audience of shareholders and potential investors. One of the original hybrid animals that they had created, which was originally female, had changed sex, unbeknownst to the preoccupied Clive & Elsa. As their lab becomes exceedingly crowded, and the risk of Dren being discovered increases, they move Dren to Elsa's late mother's farm. They name their creature Dren (nerd backwards), who exceeds their wildest dreams she begins to grow and learn at an accelerated rate. Though they disagree about actually bringing the hybrid to term, Elsa pushes the issue and she persuades Clive to go along with it, in continued secrecy. Not wishing to spend all their time engaged in what they consider mundane research for the next 5-10 years, Clive and Elsa secretly conduct their own experiments, blending human DNA with that of other animals. (Nucleic Exchange Research & Development), forbids it, instead mandating that their department be reorganized to focus on finding & extracting certain proteins from the creatures they have already created. But the pharmaceutical company that funds their research, N.E.R.D. Now they want to use human DNA in a hybrid that could revolutionize science and medicine.

Genetic engineers Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) achieve fame by successfully splicing together the DNA of different animals to create incredible new hybrid animals.The synopsis below may give away important plot points.

Splice 2009