The Black Rhinoceros is Gone

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45236688/ns/world_news-world_environment/

Fuckin' racists.

Source

Sorry, should have "western" in front of it. It's a subspecies (same genetics, but adapted to a different environment through behaviors). The genes might be around, but the memes are lost forever.

One subspecies gone, three more to go!

Do they mean extinct in nature, or extinct extinct? Because I'd think we'd have a couple in zoos.

Still, this is a tragedy. A predictable one, but still.

Wild, and even then only in one specific place. The article mentioned that there are still some on Java.

I thought they were talking about the Javan Rhinos there. Maybe not.

Those horns had better have produced some high-quality boners.

Well, patents for Viagra are about to expire anyway. If we can keep the rhinos alive for a few years, Third World gentlemen will have access to generic boner meds, presumably saving the species.

Alternatively, we might scrap those patents early, helping the recovery of animals being mass poached for their believed boner-promoting qualities.

edited 13th Nov '11 7:21:34 AM by SavageHeathen

Don't worry. I'm sure the first few things humanity will do once cloning is invented is to clone extinct animals like the rhino.

Cloning will ensure the survival of the Rhinos... You will see!

edited 11th Nov '11 7:32:57 PM by Psyga315

So far it has one big drawback - you can't teach cloned animals to live in the wild. Sure, you could bring back an extinct animal physically, so you can restore its genepool, but you can't teach it the skills it needs for survival - a species' so called memepool (that's where the word "meme" came from in the first place), or the combined memories and lessons passed down from parents to child. Some species live only off of instinct, so those should be alright, but forget about mammals and birds, and even a few reptiles and fish - without parents to show them the ropes, the species would just end up as lion (or other appropriate predator) food in a hurry.

This is also why zoos are not going to save species, either. Zoos are basically full of fancy pets, not a viable stock of species that could be reintroduced to the wild.

Yes... But Humanity always finds a way to overcome the boundaries of nature.

Maybe if we had a holodeck and could raise the clones using it...though we would need something like a database of all known species behaviors, which would be very difficult to manage. Not only will the ability to scan brain waves in the field remain out of reach for a time, but considering the fact that we have only managed to sequence the genomes of a handful of species to date does not bode well for our proposed meme database. Then there's the hormones - nobody has chemically analyzed all of the various smells and chemical signals that a rhino clone would need to learn.

And I haven't even mentioned the fact that you need an actual womb to make a clone, and though some species are cross compatible that isn't always the case and you could end up with plenty of viable eggs for your species but no uterus that wants them.

Also, cloning from adult cells has major issues - mainly, since you are using "aged" DNA, the lifespan of the clone will be shorter than normal. It is almost like giving the clone progeria.

It's a nice idea in theory, not really do-able for the foreseeable future in practice. We'd need both some massive advances in technology and an actual willingness to invest in the program (what is the economic benefits of bringing back species? In the end, wouldn't we end up bringing back glamorous species and ignoring the useful but ugly ones?), not to mention it isn't exactly ethical to introduce an extinct species back into its home range after the fact - once animals have adjusted to the species' extinction, then introducing them back into the habitat would just unbalance everything all over again.

There are a few select cases though where cloning would prove beneficial. For example, cat species. Not only are cats usually the ones keeping down the rodent & bird population (which, when it grows, harms the entire ecosystem), but they are remarkably able to use just about any cat uterus available. You can impregnate your housecat with an ocelot or a lynx, no problem, and the mother would be able to teach the kitten just about anything it needs to know. I believe such a cloning program has been attempted for the Cloud Leopard, but it was unsuccessful, partially due to the technology being in its infancy at the time.

Your scientists are so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they don't stop to think if they should.

Not true, Genepool is collective genetic variety of various animal within species. Cloning one or two would not restore genepool, a lot of different gene will be lost. You need DNA specimen from lots of animal to retain genepool.

Morality always gets in the way. Sooner or later, someone's gonna break those moral grounds. But enough about cloning, I say we steer the topic back to extinct Black Rhinos...

Sad part about the rhinos is they are probably just the tip of the iceberg. By the year 2030, expect the following to be extinct in the wild, and the remaining zoo populations slowly but surely degrading due to inbreeding:

1. Orangutan: Basically screwed. China needs lumber, orangutans need trees, who do you think is going to win this fight?

2. Tiger: The bengal and siberian are on the ropes, and no matter how hard the Chinese try they aren't bringing the Chinese tiger back. Siberian might survive thanks to Vladimir Putin's campaign to save the species, but the bengal's already lost too much habitat to recover. Thus ends the last of the tiger subspecies...

3. Amur Leopard: Already extinct in the wild, likely to go extinct in captivity soon too. This one's done for, sad to say.

4. Tuna: Tuna are being fished up faster than they can breed, and there's no mechanism for controlling the fishing industry globally and one probably won't be implemented in time to save the tuna. I'll have to tell my grandkids what it tasted like...

5. Polar Bears: congress' failure to approve of their addition to the endangered species list sealed their fate. Thanks, oil lobby.

6. American Chestnut: Barring a freak mutation leading to resistance or possible genetic engineering, the american chestnut only exists today in the form of stumps that put out small branches, only to wither and die a few years latter when they get nailed by dutch elm disease. These stumps have at tops another half a century before they start nearing the maximum lifespan of the tree. This is one species that with effort we could potentially save, but it will go extinct if we stop giving a damn, guaranteed.

It's all fun and games until certain varieties of people start going extinct..

There's some argument that orangutans ARE people...

I'm expecting river dolphins, sawfish, tuataras, at least 40% of all shark species and nearly all cranes to vanish.

Mass extinction indeed.

edited 12th Nov '11 3:05:00 AM by Gannetwhale

Don't forget basically all fish that rely on coral reefs. The reefs are dieing off worldwide at a dreadful pace.

Bees.

And without bees, a lot of insect-pollinated plants will die out.

And without those plants, humanity will die out, but that's only a minor detail.

On the subject of rhinos, having talked to a former park warden for one of the african national parks, I remember him talking about how one of the reasons previous schemes to conserve the rhino worked better than some of the ones in place today. According to him, the sole goal of previous successful schemes was to boost numbers, and this was partially achieved by releasing rhinos from one part of africa into another where rhinos were thin on the ground, allowing greater breeding stock and increasing the number of calves born.

However, today, more is known about the subspecies and area-specific variants of the rhino, and so there is pressure to try and keep rhino genetic stocks pure and not interbreed them with members of other subspecies and groups. As such, the previously adopted tactics aren't viable, and this has let to the decline of individual groups of rhinos in some areas.

He made it very clear that he found this distasteful and said it would eventually lead to conservation issues (this was a year or two ago), a position which this recent finding appears to support.

^^^ I can see where you're coming from, but why specifically tuataras?

edited 13th Nov '11 5:36:18 AM by MadeOfAxes

Because they are one/two species of reptiles that seem incapable of surviving with rats around.

This is why genetic engineering should be used on them. Given that tuataras have extremely fast genetic evolutonary rates, they are only restricted by their slow metabolism that leads to slow reproduction; that solved, and they'd be extremely adaptable.