"De-extinction" (1 Viewer)

Isurus · Mar 19, 2013

is now apparently a thing we're talking about seriously.....
TEDx DeExtinction conference: http://tedxdeextinction.org/
Revive & Restore: http://longnow.org/revive/
News re Southern Gastric Brooding Frog: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic...g-the-extinct-frog-with-a-stomach-for-a-womb/
Carl Zimmer's thoughts: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic...ic-an-all-day-exploration-and-your-questions/

As a guy with a friendly bet with a mate that I'll see a live mammoth in my lifetime, I'm already pretty interested and the restorative possibilities and ecological impacts this could have in some locations are pretty obvious. The potential cost and downsides are also obvious (especially to anyone who's seen jurassic park

). So I'm curious to see where the Birdforum posse sits.....

De-Extinction - a moral imperative or a waste of conservation funds better spent elsewhere?

fugl · Mar 19, 2013

A subject already touched upon in a sister forum: http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=171041

Mysticete · Mar 20, 2013

I am strongly in support of it, although I think people need to keep in mind it is going to be a long ways off before the technology exists to really effectively pull this off.

Personally I think people tend to pick weird choices of taxa to focus on. I would much rather see efforts being made to restore island endemics (Piopios, Bush Wrens) or animals whose main cause of extinction was human exploitation (Carolina Parakeet, Blue Buck, various mideast gazelles), than Birds/Mammals that probably require fairly huge tracks of pristine wilderness and whose introductions would be rather costly (Mammoth, Passenger Pigeon, Ivory-billed Woodpecker).

Farnboro John · Mar 20, 2013

Mysticete said:
I am strongly in support of it, although I think people need to keep in mind it is going to be a long ways off before the technology exists to really effectively pull this off.

Personally I think people tend to pick weird choices of taxa to focus on. I would much rather see efforts being made to restore island endemics (Piopios, Bush Wrens) or animals whose main cause of extinction was human exploitation (Carolina Parakeet, Blue Buck, various mideast gazelles), than Birds/Mammals that probably require fairly huge tracks of pristine wilderness and whose introductions would be rather costly (Mammoth, Passenger Pigeon, Ivory-billed Woodpecker).

Yeah but you need a flagship to attract (a) interest (including from people qualified to make a decent run at the problem) and (b) funding.

In that context the only thing that might beat a Mammoth would be a T-rex.....

John

Isurus · Mar 20, 2013

Steller's Sea Cow would be one of the ideal options for me were it not for that pesky enormous womb requirement. I totally agree regarding the island possibilities.

Mike Richardson · Mar 20, 2013

There's you lot fantasising about building Woolly Mammoth and T-rex when I’m struggling next-door on the squirrel thread to get Pine Martens introduced back into the UK!

Sabre-toothed Tiger would be my vote!

Mysticete · Mar 20, 2013

De-extinction has nothing to do with (non-bird) dinosaurs:

Humans didn't have a hand in wiping out dinosaurs

We can't get Dinosaur DNA even if we wanted. It's unlikely we will ever be able to get DNA from anything prior to the Latest Pleistocene (Ice Ages)

RonW · Mar 20, 2013

It all sounds really interesting and I'd love to see a real live mammoth. But I think it would be better to direct more resources at conserving what we have first instead of resurrecting extinct species that may or may not flourish in today's world.

lashinala · Mar 20, 2013

Think of all the useful chemicals that extinct animals produced. How did we get the majority of our drugs today? I think the extinct snakes alone would provide a plethora of useful chemicals. There's a gold mine in extinct plants and animals....just look for it.

Amarillo · Mar 21, 2013

RonW said:
It all sounds really interesting and I'd love to see a real live mammoth. But I think it would be better to direct more resources at conserving what we have first instead of resurrecting extinct species that may or may not flourish in today's world.

Totally agree with that. Its completely irresponsible in my view.

Trystan · Mar 21, 2013

It seems like putting the cart before the horse. When we have addressed habitat destruction and climate change, then I'd love to see some recently extinct species brought back. Common sense for example.

kennethwfd · Mar 21, 2013

another issue is that while it may be physically possible to recreate an extinct animal would it have the same character and instincts of the original?. how do you recreate this, when many learn from their parents. When I worked on a commercial turkey farm the birds arrived as day old chicks and several would die from each batch because they never learnt how to feed

lashinala · Mar 21, 2013

We'd probably never really know the original character and instinct of an extinct animal. Putting them back in a ecosystem that most resembles their 'era' would be the best we could do (with 'foster parents'). That would make the endeavor initially part science and part art, honestly.

Farnboro John · Mar 21, 2013

Trystan said:
I'd love to see some recently extinct species brought back. Common sense for example.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be held in DNA....

John

Mysticete · Mar 21, 2013

Solving global habitat loss and climate change won't happen until all nations have achieved economic parity. So maybe never.

That said, there are plenty of places where things that have gone extinct could be put back. Deciding not to fix things in region X because region Y is messed up doesn't make sense to me. There are species whose if resurrected could be put back into their native environments right now. Right now conservation movements are just trying to keep there patients (ecosystems) alive...at some point the ability to bring back recently extinct will allow us to finally move towards recovery.

jurek · Mar 21, 2013

Good news:
There exists now, as for 2013, actual technology to replace DNA piece by piece and turn, de facto, elephant cell culture into mammoth cell culture and clone a whole mammoth.

Bad news:
The cost makes such project undoable - even for mega-popular animals like mammoth and even for billionaries.

So live mammoths are unfortunately, a thing technically possible but unlikely to leave our imagination, together with stopping the world hunger, colonization of outer space etc.

Isurus · Mar 22, 2013

jurek said:
Good news:
There exists now, as for 2013, actual technology to replace DNA piece by piece and turn, de facto, elephant cell culture into mammoth cell culture and clone a whole mammoth.

Bad news:
The cost makes such project undoable - even for mega-popular animals like mammoth and even for billionaries.

So live mammoths are unfortunately, a thing technically possible but unlikely to leave our imagination, together with stopping the world hunger, colonization of outer space etc.

I think it'd be a bit more accurate to add "as for 2013" into the bad news as well as the good. The rate with which the cost of this stuff is dropping is fairly serious I understand.

fugl · Mar 22, 2013

Isurus said:
I think it'd be a bit more accurate to add "as for 2013" into the bad news as well as the good. The rate with which the cost of this stuff is dropping is fairly serious I understand.

Indeed, at the present time the question's mainly a matter of priorities on a comparatively minor scale. It's in the (probably not too distant) future, when the technology becomes really cheap, that the truly hard choices will have to be made.

Isurus · Mar 22, 2013

fugl said:
It's in the (probably not too distant) future, when the technology becomes really cheap, that the truly hard choices will have to be made.

Indeed but by that point my army of glyptodonts with lasers mounted on them will have taken over the world so you lot won't need to worry about the choices! :king:

LabradorDuck · Mar 23, 2013

Have they figured out how to clone birds yet? Last I heard, no species of bird had ever been cloned (I assume the chicken will be the first).

I have no problem with "de-extinction" for species that humans have wiped out recently, provided that the habitat for them exists. Preserving the habitats and species we still have should take priority, but I think it isn't quite a zero-sum game because a "de-extinction" project has the potential to attract "can we do it?"-type resources that would not have otherwise gone to conservation of any kind. Conservation agencies and organizations are unlikely to be involved at all in "de-extinction" of prehistoric species, except maybe to lobby against releasing them into the wild (how long until Texas develops an self-sustaining population of Pyrenean Ibex?).

Sidestepping the ethics and practicality of "de-extinction," I think if cloning from long-dead remains becomes practical, it might have a role to play in conservation of extremely rare species. For instance, we already raise Whooping Cranes in captivity for release into the wild; wouldn't it be nice if we could clone some museum specimens to increase the population's genetic diversity? To me that has more certain benefits than hoping we can bring back a species from scratch.

"De-extinction" (1 Viewer)

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Formerly known as Skink1978

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Well-known member

Similar threads

Users who are viewing this thread