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Could the dodo come back from extinction?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dingusdew 4y ago[dead]
- tonymillion 4y agoNot on its own, that’s for sure
- shmde 4y agoThe Dodo used to walk around, And take the sun and air. The sun yet warms his native ground -- The Dodo is not there! The voice which used to squawk and squeak Is now for ever dumb -- Yet may you see his bones and beak All in the Mu-se-um. Took a lot of time to memorize this in my childhood, sad to see it become obsolete.
- princevegeta89 4y agoWas this taught at your school?
- shmde 4y agoYes. It was an Anglo-Indian Christian school maybe thats why. None of my peers from other schools remember having it.
- Someone 4y agoThat’s one of the better ones from https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=belloc&book=beasts&readAll=true https://www.heritage-history.com/index.php?c=read&author=bel...
- HN_is_for_gemes 4y ago[dead]
- yCloser 4y agobringing back species because we'd like to taste them is somehow interesting
- Zetobal 4y agoThe guys who manned the lighthouse on the island said they are awful.
- hnbad 4y agoOn the other hand allegedly giant tortoises (not yet extinct) are the most delicious animal on Earth. There's probably still a niche market for novelty meats from extinct species though.
- avar 4y agoIf lab grown meat takes off there's no reason in principle for why cattle, chickens and pigs couldn't be replaced by say the blue whale, dodo and black rhino. We might even find human meat at the supermarket. If all you need is a small cell culture to bootstrap most or all current ethical, conservation and disease concerns will go out the window.
- flangola7 4y agoWho says it only has to be a real animal? Give me Rapirin Corto(TM) - the naturally spicy fruity sirloin!
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoTaco Bell chubacabra tacos.
- thefounder 4y agoI don't see many people rushing to eat lab grown meat unless it's signifiantly cheaper(i.e cheaper than what's used in junk food "restaurants").
- hnbad 4y agoI think the far more concerning part is the quote at the end of the article (emphasis added): > These technologies will also help us to solve more proximate challenges. We will learn to edit the genomes of species that are still alive but in danger of becoming extinct, to help them to adapt to their rapidly changing habitats. Most species that are in danger of becoming extinct aren't so because of their "rapidly changing habitats" but because of man-made destruction of their habitats. Either directly (e.g. by burning down the rain forest to clear land for agriculture) or indirectly (climate change). Not to mention the various species affected by fishing, hunting and agriculture as collateral damage. I'm not sure how DNA manipulation is supposed to help with any of this. The closest thing I can think of is "Roundup™ resistant bees" and I shudder at the thought. This feels like it has less potential in preservation and more in creating various GMO livestock.
- feanaro 4y ago> I'm not sure how DNA manipulation is supposed to help with any of this. Killer dodo birds, here we come.
- mjevans 4y agoGoose game was a warning!
- Veen 4y agoIt might be useful to genetically engineer hornier Giant Pandas.
- edgyquant 4y ago“Man made destruction” is the same thing as “rapidly changing habitat”
- hnbad 4y agoYeah but how do you engineer animals to withstand destruction of their habitat by humans? I presume making them capable of hunting and killing humans to protect their habitat is off the table.
- kman82 4y agoSo… no?
- 867-5309 4y agoyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- once_inc 4y agoBetteridge's Law of Headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- bharathyes 4y agowhy would we want to? far as I remember, dodo evolved from a south asian bird that adapted to an island with abundant food and no competition. if they were alive today preserving them would mean establishing an uninhabited island that wouldnt get any predators where they can thrive. but there already are many species like that that could use our help.
- deafpolygon 4y agoFatter chicken
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jmclnx 4y agoI would like nothing better to see the dodo brought back. But right now, Baiji is probably extinct and the Vaquita is not far from extinction, all due to us. Yes, that is how things work but we are smart enough to know we are killing these species ourselves. We still cannot bring back whatever, but far easier and cheaper to change our ways and try and keep existing species around.
- RamblingCTO 4y ago> all due to us Sorry, but what do you or I have to do with chinese rivers being poluted by local fishers?
- mwsfc 4y agoHe means human nature in general.
- RamblingCTO 4y agoYeah, I know what he meant. But I'm not a big fan of taking ownership of everything that's fucked up in the planet and make it personal. These are local effects that I as a European have nothing to do with. Fishers in China and California are the problem. We have our own problems where I'm not even part of that are enough. I dislike the trend to globalize local problems and taking ownership of everything.
- oefnak 4y agoWell you have a phone or a car that is partially manufactured in China.. so there's probably some Chinese river pollution from that. Globalization goes both ways.
- P_I_Staker 4y agoHe meant people in general. There's no need to be racist.
- 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y ago"Sequencing the genome" is a bit misleading, it's "sequencing a genome", as the DNA used in the project came from a single individual dodo. Species are not individuals, they're populations. To get a snapshot of a species you'd need hundreds of genomes sequenced, then you'd look at the statistics of the variation between those genomes. A healthy breeding population can't be clonal, this is pretty well understood from the standpoint of population biology. So you'd want to sequence many genomes, or at least have a means of introducing genetic diversity within the population. That natural population diversity evolved over about 20 million years (wiki), so at least several million generations of dodo ancestors. Without the population diversity, you get the inbreeding problem, e.g. homozygous recessive genes causing all kinds of problems in development, reproduction, etc. Granted island populations are known for limited population diversity but cloning a single genome seems much worse.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> Rather, such technologies offer the potential to edit the genomes of current threatened species in order to help them adapt to changes in habitat and climate. Make the dodo an apex predator, six feet tall, with a razor-sharp beak. Call it Indomitus Dodo. What could possibly go wrong?
- tempodox 4y agoThe hubris in the quoted statement is unbelievable. I only hope that the people thinking up such stuff never get any decision-making power worth mentioning.
- lisasays 4y agoThe answer is "no", of course. As any biologist will tell you - these new technologies can't begin to bring these species "back". All they can do is create chimeras (based on other species) with certain attributes pasted on, as it were, such that they start to resemble the extinct species. But there is no technology that anyone can foresee that will bring any of these species back, with their entire genomes intact. The premise of the article (that this is an open question, and you need to scroll down to find the answer) is flawed. It's basically clickbait.
- wwwpatdelcom 4y agoThat's John Hammond's business model in Jurassic Park: build a bunch of chimeras that look like what people imagine Dinosaurs to be, clickbait people into visiting his park by calling them actual Dinosaurs.