What are your thoughts on cloning extinct species? Not so much the dinosaurs but the thylacine etc.. Is there any point? How could they continue to survive with a limited gene pool?
I don't take any moral issue with cloning extinct species. But I doubt it would serve much conservation purpose, and shoot, even research would be limited. You clone a thylacine and you have something that's genetically identical to a thylacine, and it will have some of its instincts, but without seeing how they grow in the wild, how they're raised by thylacine parents, you're never gonna get the full picture. Still, I'm sure we'd get some good research out of it. Never know until we try! But anyway, that stuff about them growing up in captivity and raised by humans does mean that most cloned species likely wouldn't be able to survive in the wild. So I can see why people would take issue with spending so much money on bringing back a species that will never live in the wild again when there are so many wild species that need saving. Even just having them in zoos brings up that argument. On the flipside, there is the possibility that cloning extinct species would bring in more interest, meaning, more money. Clone a thylacine, I imagine those researchers would get lots more funding. Have a thylacine in a zoo, people from all over the world would visit, that would bring in a lot of money that the zoo could use for other things. One of my big concerns with the subject of cloning extinct species is the fear that it will make people complacent when it comes to wild conservation. I already hear a lot of people say "at least we'll have them in zoos" when they hear about a species dying out in the wild. Obviously I love zoos, wouldn't be here if I didn't, but we all know that it's no substitute for wild conservation. If scientists can clone extinct species, will people get a mentality of "we can just clone them back"? Not saying we shouldn't clone because of this, just that it's an issue that would likely need to be addressed. Personally I'd like to see more discussion on the possibility of using cloning to increase the genetic diversity of current endangered species. Reintroduce genes from a South China tiger that died 70 years ago or something.
As cool as it would be to see extinct species, I don't really *get* it. We have so many species alive now that need our help and could go extinct within the next hundred years, why the hell would we waste our money, time, and scientists on bringing back a couple of an already gone animal? At most, we could create a few via cloning, but getting an active population, especially one that has some genetic diversity within it, isn't really possible with any extinct species due to the number of usable samples. We aren't going to be able to bring back a species, just a few individuals of it. Save the cheetah, the monk seals, the saiga instead.
I don't really think it's a good idea at all, for several reasons. Most are listed above. One big concern of mine, however, is if scientists try to back species that have been extinct for thousands (or even millions) of years. The Woolly Mammoth is a good example. Scientists say that mammoths will help restore the Arctic ecosystem. I suspect they will become a major invasive species.
Eh, a species like the mammoth isn't likely to become an invasive. They're slow to mature and slow to breed, the population wouldn't grow quickly enough to be an issue. And if nothing else, they probably wouldn't be that hard to wipe out. (again) Like, say they do become a problem. I'm sure there are tons of trophy hunters who would pay through the nose to kill a mammoth. And some people would go in for the ivory.
Keep in mind that a good deal of these mammals may look similar to their extinct counterparts but will also lack the learned behaviors. It also puts a damper on the conservation message.
Agreed. The cost would undoubtedly be enormous. I don't see how bringing back the extinct giants like mammoths and possibly the dinosaurs would be a benefit. Many of our current giants (elephants, rhinos, whales) are already struggling to stay around. I think the money used to bring back the extinct species would be better put towards saving the species we are currently in danger of losing. How would woolly mammoths help the Earth? Without any natural predators, if mammoths did manage to be established again, it would seem that humans would have to control their numbers. Could the tundra even withstand mammoths now?
I believe @ZooBinh is referring to the claims made by Pleistocene Park about the impacts reintroducing mammoths to the tundra/taiga would have, summarised in this article: Welcome to the Future Range of the Woolly Mammoth "For decades, the Zimovs and their animals have stripped away the region’s dark trees and shrubs to make way for the return of grasslands. Research suggests that these grasslands will reflect more sunlight than the forests and scrub they replace, causing the Arctic to absorb less heat. In winter, the short grass and animal-trampled snow will offer scant insulation, enabling the season’s freeze to reach deeper into the Earth’s crust, cooling the frozen soil beneath and locking one of the world’s most dangerous carbon-dioxide lodes in a thermodynamic vault. To test these landscape-scale cooling effects, Nikita will need to import the large herbivores of the Pleistocene. He’s already begun bringing them in from far-off lands, two by two, as though filling an ark. But to grow his Ice Age lawn into a biome that stretches across continents, he needs millions more. He needs wild horses, musk oxen, reindeer, bison, and predators to corral the herbivores into herds. And, to keep the trees beaten back, he needs hundreds of thousands of resurrected woolly mammoths."
I Im all for it! Seeing Asian Elephants, camels, zebras, cheetahs, bison on the plains would be an awe-inspiring sight!
Within reasonable limits, I disagree. Most of those species (or their native counterparts) were driven to extinction by humans. The time scale is a bit on the extreme end, but reintroduced populations of regionally extinct species have boasted ecological benefits in other areas. We are not likely to see Elephants ranging the Caprock Canyon, or Camels and Guanacos roaming the Great Basin, or Pronghorns putting their ridiculously over-engineered vision and speed to the test against Cheetahs...but it’d be cool... And as ecologically sound as the rise of the Panamanian Ithmus or the sinking of Berengia.
I know their extinct counterparts once roamed America, but the species you will have to introduce have involved in a completely different place (Africa in most cases...), so introducing them to a temperate system (or if you introduce them to a Desert area, still a completely different ecosystem), would be "a bit strange" to put it mildly...
Agreed, and whether some of those species could even handle places like the Great Plains (thinking elephants and cheetahs in snow and sub-zero temperatures) seems debatable.
