3 ms·

The question of 'Why bring back extinct species?' is fundamentally the same as 'Why save species from extinction?'. It's unspoken but seems to be widely underst

by ksymph 2y ago

The question of 'Why bring back extinct species?' is fundamentally the same as 'Why save species from extinction?'. It's unspoken but seems to be widely understood that biodiversity and preventing its permanent loss has inherent value. It sometimes has economic or ecological value too, or the potential in the future, but even when that's not the case most would agree we should aim to minimize extinction of other animals - if for no other reason than it being easier to drive a species to extinction than revive any of the billions of extinct species out there. (at least for now) It's curious that the response to bringing back mammoths and less-stripey-zebras is so lukewarm when there's very little of the same criticism directed at efforts to save obscure species that are in decline. Say it was discovered that a small herd of quagga had survived since we thought they died out in 1883, but without human intervention they will soon due to habitat loss. Imagine: "Why would we want to save them? The world is inhospitable to them now, their population declined for a reason. They have no use to us, and their niche isn't one that couldn't be filled by living species that we could import. To keep them from going extinct would be a cruel and irrational act of ego."

_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Seriously. This can be visual, stunning, imagination engaging possible success that can be leveraged for more support for conservation. You won't build that kind of awareness with obscure rodents, that's just not how human civilization is wired to direct it's energy/attention.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Should this logic also apply to human beings? Some are more ‘visual, stunning, imagination engaging’ than others…
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    It probably shouldn't. But in reality it does. Most spokespeople are above the human beauty/engaging norm.
WhatsTheBigIdea 2y ago
This is an excellent question. Firstly, there are some very major differences between bringing a species back from extinction and saving a species from extinction. Perhaps the most radical difference is cost, with resurrecting an extinct species being likely impossible but best case costing at least 4 orders of magnitude more. If the cost of a chicken egg was $10,000 it would likely not be worth the trouble. At $0.15 or $0.60, though, chicken eggs provide an excellent value and are nice to have around! The real question here is why intervene to keep a species from extinction? The answer is that genetic diversity is massive valuable. The trouble is that the value assessment is very hard to calculate concretely and that value is also very hard to extract in the form of direct profits. Let’s take the banana as an example. The global banana market had sales of about $140B in 2023… clearly people value bananas. Today 99% of global trade in bananas is in a single variety, the “Cavendish” banana. But it was not always so. Until the 1950’s the world’s dominant banana was the “Gros Michel”. Over the course of the 1950’s the Gros Michel went commercially extinct as a result of “Panama Disease”. Researchers scoured the world to find a banana not susceptible to Panama Disease that could replace the Gros Michel in commerce. What they found is the Cavendish. Today, a new strain of Panama Disease has evolved to target the Cavendish. Extinction of Cavendish is proceeding more slowly than that of the Gros Michel, but it seems more or less inevitable at this point. The fact that we are likely to see 2 varieties of banana go commercially extinct within a single century, is kind of nuts. It seems that the half-life of a commercial banana variety is less that 50 years. The only reason we still have commercial bananas today is because of the rather deep genetic diversity in bananas the earth continued to possess in the 1950’s. That genetic diversity is significantly diminished today. If we value the banana market as a perpetual annuity with the 2023 growth rate of 7% and a discount rate of 3%, the net present value of the banana market to the citizens of the world is approximately $3.5 Trillion. How much is it rational to spend preserving this perpetual annuity? Anyway you slice it, the answer is very big… and very much bigger than is currently being spent to preserve the genetic diversity of the banana today. What was the value of the American Chestnut tree? Hard to say, but it is clear that the loss was massive. I've read estimates that the American Chestnut provided (as fodder) something like 10% of the energy for the pre-extinction American transportation system as well as a substantial winter food source for all kinds of livestock, game and people. Just as transportation energy the yearly value of the American Chestnut would have been about 2% of US GDP.
permo-w 2y ago
if every copy of a film was slowly being erased from the records, you'd rather preserve copies of the film than have the director's cousin remake it based on some pictures and your grandpa's diaries. you can obviously do both, but option 1 is clearly going to be more popular any number of analogies are applicable: breeding extant animals to resemble extinct ones based on what some self-appointed human reckons they were like is not comparable to preservation. it's nostalgia, it is ego, it's a vanity project, essentially. no surprise it was inspired by the Nazis
LittleTimothy 2y ago
I don't think it is fundamentally the same question. If someone was about to throw a brick through a window I would say "Hey! Don't do that". But I wouldn't walk past a smashed window and think to myself "Better go fix that window". Separate to that I also think that the question of bringing back a species like the Quagga is very different to bringing back the Mammoths. The Quagga went extinct recently and directly because of our hunting them. If we breed new ones, they'll likely fit into the ecosystem as it is today and may even thrive. Mammoths went extinct an extremely long time ago, the environment is totally different to when they were alive, we have no idea how they would impact the ecosystem today. Maybe they'd be totally unfit and would only exist as pets, or maybe they'd fit in great and drive some other animal or plant to extinction as their population explodes as an invasive species. The question of "Why bring back extinct species" is the same as "Why not bring some new different species into Australia"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

by ksymph 2y ago

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

Seriously. This can be visual, stunning, imagination engaging possible success that can be leveraged for more support for conservation. You won't build that kind of awareness with obscure rodents, that's just not how human civilization is wired to direct it's energy/attention.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
Should this logic also apply to human beings? Some are more ‘visual, stunning, imagination engaging’ than others…
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  It probably shouldn't. But in reality it does. Most spokespeople are above the human beauty/engaging norm.

WhatsTheBigIdea 2y ago

This is an excellent question. Firstly, there are some very major differences between bringing a species back from extinction and saving a species from extinction. Perhaps the most radical difference is cost, with resurrecting an extinct species being likely impossible but best case costing at least 4 orders of magnitude more. If the cost of a chicken egg was $10,000 it would likely not be worth the trouble. At $0.15 or $0.60, though, chicken eggs provide an excellent value and are nice to have around! The real question here is why intervene to keep a species from extinction? The answer is that genetic diversity is massive valuable. The trouble is that the value assessment is very hard to calculate concretely and that value is also very hard to extract in the form of direct profits. Let’s take the banana as an example. The global banana market had sales of about $140B in 2023… clearly people value bananas. Today 99% of global trade in bananas is in a single variety, the “Cavendish” banana. But it was not always so. Until the 1950’s the world’s dominant banana was the “Gros Michel”. Over the course of the 1950’s the Gros Michel went commercially extinct as a result of “Panama Disease”. Researchers scoured the world to find a banana not susceptible to Panama Disease that could replace the Gros Michel in commerce. What they found is the Cavendish. Today, a new strain of Panama Disease has evolved to target the Cavendish. Extinction of Cavendish is proceeding more slowly than that of the Gros Michel, but it seems more or less inevitable at this point. The fact that we are likely to see 2 varieties of banana go commercially extinct within a single century, is kind of nuts. It seems that the half-life of a commercial banana variety is less that 50 years. The only reason we still have commercial bananas today is because of the rather deep genetic diversity in bananas the earth continued to possess in the 1950’s. That genetic diversity is significantly diminished today. If we value the banana market as a perpetual annuity with the 2023 growth rate of 7% and a discount rate of 3%, the net present value of the banana market to the citizens of the world is approximately $3.5 Trillion. How much is it rational to spend preserving this perpetual annuity? Anyway you slice it, the answer is very big… and very much bigger than is currently being spent to preserve the genetic diversity of the banana today. What was the value of the American Chestnut tree? Hard to say, but it is clear that the loss was massive. I've read estimates that the American Chestnut provided (as fodder) something like 10% of the energy for the pre-extinction American transportation system as well as a substantial winter food source for all kinds of livestock, game and people. Just as transportation energy the yearly value of the American Chestnut would have been about 2% of US GDP.

permo-w 2y ago

if every copy of a film was slowly being erased from the records, you'd rather preserve copies of the film than have the director's cousin remake it based on some pictures and your grandpa's diaries. you can obviously do both, but option 1 is clearly going to be more popular any number of analogies are applicable: breeding extant animals to resemble extinct ones based on what some self-appointed human reckons they were like is not comparable to preservation. it's nostalgia, it is ego, it's a vanity project, essentially. no surprise it was inspired by the Nazis

LittleTimothy 2y ago

I don't think it is fundamentally the same question. If someone was about to throw a brick through a window I would say "Hey! Don't do that". But I wouldn't walk past a smashed window and think to myself "Better go fix that window". Separate to that I also think that the question of bringing back a species like the Quagga is very different to bringing back the Mammoths. The Quagga went extinct recently and directly because of our hunting them. If we breed new ones, they'll likely fit into the ecosystem as it is today and may even thrive. Mammoths went extinct an extremely long time ago, the environment is totally different to when they were alive, we have no idea how they would impact the ecosystem today. Maybe they'd be totally unfit and would only exist as pets, or maybe they'd fit in great and drive some other animal or plant to extinction as their population explodes as an invasive species. The question of "Why bring back extinct species" is the same as "Why not bring some new different species into Australia"

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]