Which animals should be brought back from extinction?

[Ears and Eggs]

Given the recent discussion about the so-called "dire wolves", wonder which other animals would be awesome to re-create and see.

 

[GSS]

None.
Do you realize how many mutations there were before they finally cloned Dolly the sheep.
Probably very painful ones to the failed clones also.
Yes its been 25 years, still but the failures are still going to happen.

Where would you keep a Woolly Mamouth? I see disease spreading also and maby wiping out are healthy Mammals.

 

[Ears and Eggs]

Should bring back gigantopithecus just so it could rage, escape, and go on a rampage.



Imagine the chaos if some gigantopithecus got into the SELEM venue and ran amok, smashing big frame ion lasers to smithereens with their massive fists, throwing some of LPF's largest members dozens of feet into the air before double overhand seismic tossing people through racks of laser scanners.

 

[RA_pierce]

While I think the technology is cool and I love wildlife, I have some issues with the pop-science framing of this subject.
First of all, its highly questionable whether these animals are more than slightly modified gray wolves.
Second, gray wolves in North America face their own dire crisis of extinction due to persecution and habitat destruction.
Third, even if we are successful in producing facsimiles of extinct creatures, where will they live, in terms of available space and ecological niche?

My concern is that these projects, much like the space-faring fantasies, take our eyes off the real and truly important issues we face as obligatory stewards of the world we claim dominion of. In the best case scenario, we develop technology that can facilitate true conservation projects for wildlife populations we have carelessly destroyed. In the worst case scenario, we proceed with reckless abandon, using the far-fetched fantasy of "de-extinction" as a justification to ignore the catastrophe unfolding before us.

From another perspective, it is irresponsible and cruel to use our scientific tools to make living beings that are confined to a laboratory environment, with no hope of a free future, just because it's cool. Intelligent, emotive animals, like wolves, deserve respect and freedom, as do all creatures.

I've studied population genetics, evolution, genomics, and conservation biology over the past 10 years. This type of project simply cannot restore the needed genetic diversity of an extinct or declining population, and does nothing to address the root cause of extinction. Without first addressing the rampant greed and rejection of the natural world that destroys entire continents, we will continue to lose species at break-neck speed. Any animal brought back from death is doomed to return to extinction because we have not even seriously attempted to solve the underlying problems. In my opinion, we would do better to heed the warnings of our futuristic fiction, rather than plunge headfirst into a self-fulfilling dystopian prophesy.

We have yet to master preservation of what still remains, so how can we imagine that we can restore what we've lost?

 

[Thefudger]

None.
Do you realize how many mutations there were before they finally cloned Dolly the sheep.
Probably very painful ones to the failed clones also.
Yes its been 25 years, still but the failures are still going to happen.

Where would you keep a Woolly Mamouth? I see disease spreading also and maby wiping out are healthy Mammals.

Where do we keep elephants? Oh right.

I think it's not a terrible thing to experiment around with. It has very good implications for being a "commercial" driver towards development of tools for biodiversity efforts, kind of like how we got nice laser diodes from projectors or blu ray burners. We need biodiversity so that wildlife can adapt to changing environments, and being able to step in and just give some wild populations a boost like this is a very very good ace in the hole.

What happens when all of a sudden we lose a major predator because of a crazy disease? Now you have decimation of fauna and barren wastelands. *Or* we could use the tech from bringing back previous wildlife to do just that, or have a new creature specialized for that niche that also won't hurt people or crops, saving the natural landscape along with people's needs.

We have done similar things in the past, like introducing wolves into places that needed some predation, but it's backfired a little here and there. People will pay a lot more to see stuff like Jurassic Park than a regular zoo, and that's how we can fund that kind of stuff. The biggest hurdle in environmental biology is funding because people really don't care too much about wildlife when it comes at a cost to their wallet.

Tl;Dr
The trickle down effect makes this silly venture into biotechnology a very important tool for environmental biology.

 

[Thefudger]

While I think the technology is cool and I love wildlife, I have some issues with the pop-science framing of this subject.
First of all, its highly questionable whether these animals are more than slightly modified gray wolves.
Second, gray wolves in North America face their own dire crisis of extinction due to persecution and habitat destruction.
Third, even if we are successful in producing facsimiles of extinct creatures, where will they live, in terms of available space and ecological niche?

My concern is that these projects, much like the space-faring fantasies, take our eyes off the real and truly important issues we face as obligatory stewards of the world we claim dominion of. In the best case scenario, we develop technology that can facilitate true conservation projects for wildlife populations we have carelessly destroyed. In the worst case scenario, we proceed with reckless abandon, using the far-fetched fantasy of "de-extinction" as a justification to ignore the catastrophe unfolding before us.

From another perspective, it is irresponsible and cruel to use our scientific tools to make living beings that are confined to a laboratory environment, with no hope of a free future, just because it's cool. Intelligent, emotive animals, like wolves, deserve respect and freedom, as do all creatures.

I've studied population genetics, evolution, genomics, and conservation biology over the past 10 years. This type of project simply cannot restore the needed genetic diversity of an extinct or declining population, and does nothing to address the root cause of extinction. Without first addressing the rampant greed and rejection of the natural world that destroys entire continents, we will continue to lose species at break-neck speed. Any animal brought back from death is doomed to return to extinction because we have not even seriously attempted to solve the underlying problems. In my opinion, we would do better to heed the warnings of our futuristic fiction, rather than plunge headfirst into a self-fulfilling dystopian prophesy.

We have yet to master preservation of what still remains, so how can we imagine that we can restore what we've lost?

Look forward rather than backwards. The same tech used to restore extinct populations can be used to create new ones that fit their (ever changing) niche better.

 

[GSS]

Where do we keep elephants? Oh right.

I think it's not a terrible thing to experiment around with. It has very good implications for being a "commercial" driver towards development of tools for biodiversity efforts, kind of like how we got nice laser diodes from projectors or blu ray burners. We need biodiversity so that wildlife can adapt to changing environments, and being able to step in and just give some wild populations a boost like this is a very very good ace in the hole.

What happens when all of a sudden we lose a major predator because of a crazy disease? Now you have decimation of fauna and barren wastelands. *Or* we could use the tech from bringing back previous wildlife to do just that, or have a new creature specialized for that niche that also won't hurt people or crops, saving the natural landscape along with people's needs.

We have done similar things in the past, like introducing wolves into places that needed some predation, but it's backfired a little here and there. People will pay a lot more to see stuff like Jurassic Park than a regular zoo, and that's how we can fund that kind of stuff. The biggest hurdle in environmental biology is funding because people really don't care too much about wildlife when it comes at a cost to their wallet.

Tl;Dr
The trickle down effect makes this silly venture into biotechnology a very important tool for environmental biology.

A woolly Mamouth im guessing is at least double the size of a African elephant with 5 times the size of their tusks.
They also most likely had a different diet back then also.

Oh so your saying keep them in a zoo?? How stupid of me

 

[Ricker]

A woolly Mamouth im guessing is at least double the size of a African elephant with 5 times the size of their tusks.
They also most likely had a different diet back then also.

Oh so your saying keep them in a zoo?? How stupid of me

I believe they are about the same size of an African Elephant. Don't have an opinion either way.

 

[Encap]

There is no de-extinction of anything to date. Maybe one day they can de-extinct my grandmother so her great granddaughter can see what he great grandmother looked like when alive, but.... lol

If you look at the articles about the "dire Wolf " de-extinction" you will see all they did is take a fragment from a dire wolf tooth and married it with a modern day gray wolf to get just a couple of "dire wolf like" characteristics like white fur and a slightly larger skull.
The thing they created is not a "dire wolf" . It is fancy modern gray wolf.

"Did they actually make a dire wolf?
Colossal released a video that invited viewers to “experience the first dire wolf howls heard in over 10,000 years”. But these are not dire wolf howls, and these are not dire wolves. To make the pups, scientists edited the DNA inside grey wolf cells to make it more dire wolf-like.
The result is that the vast majority of the animals’ DNA is still that of the grey wolf.
If the idea was to generate interest, or hype, the dire wolf announcement worked, but in the midst of it all, there is a conspicuous absence of peer-reviewed, publicly accessible science. Colossal hasn’t released its methods or analysis of results for scientific or public scrutiny. This isn’t science as most researchers practice and do i
This is a carefully orchestrated PR campaign, by a private company with investors fronting $435Million and valued at more than $10Billion for gamblers purposes"
It is all a PR campaign to phishing for research dollars to burn and mostly BS pandering to their investors and potential investors with hype + smoke and mirrors press releases. Colossal Biosciences has not yet filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) thus Colossal Biosciences IPO price does not exist at this time, as Colossal Biosciences is still a private company and has not yet conducted an IPO. Colossal is still in the pre-revenue stage as a business.
See: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9ejy3gdvo

"It’s all hype and total BS.
What they’ve actually done is genetically modify gray wolf DNA to resemble what they think a dire wolf looked like. There’s zero real dire wolf DNA involved here. They just edited gray wolf DNA to mimic some of the supposed traits of a dire wolf—and only made 14 changes to the genome.
It gets even more ridiculous. They're claiming the gray wolf is the dire wolf's closest living relative. Nope. That's complete nonsense. Dire wolves weren't even true wolves—they just looked like wolves because of convergent evolution. Their last common ancestor with gray wolves lived nearly 6 million years ago. In reality, their closest living relative is probably a jackal.

This whole thing reeks of a scam—just a bunch of tech bros trying to cash in on investor hype and buzzwords.

Honestly, it’s getting harder and harder to trust anything these days… welcome to the post-truth era.
From: https://www.ultimatereef.net/thread...x-must-admit-this-had-me-for-a-second.938193/

 

[CurtisOliver]